PART II.--I. CLOUDS IN THE HORIZON.

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THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

Of Literature, Art, and Science.

Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, SEPTEMBER 1, 1851. No. II.

INSTITUTIONS FOR SAILORS, IN NEW-YORK.

[Illustration: HEALTH-OFFICER BOARDING AN IMMIGRANT SHIP, QUARANTINE,

STATEN ISLAND.]

The maritime commerce of New-York has increased so rapidly that it has

continually outgrown the space appropriated for its accommodation, so

that the docks, wharves, warehouses, and landings, have been found

wholly inadequate to the reception of the business which has poured in

upon them. But the benevolent institutions of the "Empire City,"

designed to meliorate the condition of sea-faring men, have been fully

equal to the exigencies of this improvident class of laborers, and are

among the noblest and best conducted of the many charitable

institutions in this great and growing metropolis of the New World.

Commerce is the life and soul of New-York, and the most selfish

motives should lead to the establishment of suitable retreats and

hospitals for the benefit of the class of men without whose labors its

wheels could not revolve; but it is not to those who are most

benefited by the labors of seamen that they are indebted for the

existence of safe havens of retreat, where they may cast anchor in

repose, where they can no longer follow their dangerous and

storm-tost business. Seamen are the only class who have asylums

provided expressly for their use, either in sickness or old age. The

nation provides no hospital like that of Greenwich, where the tars who

are disabled in the public service find a home and an honorable

support, but it lays a capitation tax on all the seamen in the navy

for the creation of a fund, out of which the Naval Asylum, the

Wallabout Hospital, &c., for the disabled, invalid, and superannuated

of the navy have, at their own cost, not altogether disagreeable

homes. New-York, however, from the munificence of private individuals

and the creation of a fund from a tax on seamen, can boast of

excellent institutions for the ample and comfortable accommodation of

all the sick and infirm sailors who have earned a right of admission

by sailing from this port. In this respect there is no other city in

the world that can equal New-York.

The quarantine ground of the port of New-York, which is on the

north-eastern point of Staten Island, five and a half miles from the

Battery, is admirably located for the purposes of purification, and

liberally endowed with all the necessary means for the cure of the

sick and the prevention of the spread of disease. The ground

appropriated for the purposes of a lazaretto has a frontage on the bay

of about fourteen hundred feet, and extends back twelve hundred feet.

It is inclosed by a high brick wall, and includes suitable hospitals

for the accommodation of the sick, houses for the resident physician,

and offices for the numerous persons employed about the grounds. The

largest hospital, appropriated for fever patients, is that nearest the

water. It is constructed of brick, is three stories high, and one

hundred and thirty-six feet long by twenty-eight feet wide. The

building on the rising ground next above this is intended for

convalescents. It is built of brick, three stories high, fifty feet

long, and forty-five feet high, with two wings sixty-six by twenty-six

feet each. Higher up, beyond this, is the small-pox hospital, which

generally has the largest number of patients. It is but two stories,

eighty feet long and twenty-eight feet wide; like the other hospitals,

it is built of brick, and has open galleries on the outside, in front,

and rear. The quarantine hospitals, although forming no unimportant

part of the maritime institutions of New-York, do not properly come

under the head of those denominated benevolent, as they are merely

sanitary and for the purpose of preventing the spread of contagious

diseases.

[Illustration: THE SEAMEN'S RETREAT.]

The Seamen's Retreat is also on Staten Island, a mile below the

quarantine ground, built upon a natural terrace, about one hundred

feet above the water, and fronting the Narrows. The location is one of

exceeding beauty, being surrounded by sylvan scenery of unsurpassed

loveliness, and commanding a prospect of great extent, which embraces

the city, the shore of New Jersey, the Palisades, Long Island, and the

highlands of Neversink and Sandy Hook. The Hospital is a noble

building, constructed of rough granite, three stories high, and

surrounded by piazzas, upon which the patients may inhale the pure

air, and beguile their confinement by watching the ever-changing

panorama presented by the bay, with its countless ships and steamers.

The Retreat is intended solely for sick but not disabled seamen. It is

supported by a fund derived from a state capitation tax, levied upon

all seamen sailing from this port, and is the only establishment of

the kind in the United States, or, we believe, in the world. Seamen

are the only class who are compelled by the law of the state to

contribute to a fund to form a provision for them in case of sickness.

The income for the support of the Retreat is ample, and the most

liberal provision is allowed for all whose necessities compel them to

seek admission. On the grounds are houses for the residence of the

physician and keeper.

[Illustration: SAILOR'S SNUG HARBOR.]

This noble Charity is situated on the north side of Staten Island,

about three miles from the Quarantine, and commands a magnificent

view, with the city in the distance. It is surrounded with elegant

villas, pretty cottages, and well cultivated farms, and is in the

midst of the loveliest rural scenery that the neighborhood of New-York

can boast of. The grounds belonging to the institution comprise about

one hundred and sixty acres of land, which is inclosed by a handsome

iron fence that cost, a few years since, thirty-five thousand dollars.

The principal building is constructed of brick and faced with white

marble, with a marble portico. The corner-stone was laid in 1831, and

the institution opened for the reception of its inmates in 1833. The

centre building is sixty-five by one hundred feet, with two wings

fifty-one by one hundred feet, connected with the main building by

corridors. There are two handsome houses for the residences of the

governor of the institution, and the physician, and numerous offices

and outhouses.

This noble institution owes its existence to Captain James Randall,

who, in the year 1801, bequeathed a piece of land in the upper part of

the city, for the foundation of a retreat for worn-out seamen, who had

sailed from the port of New-York; it was called most appropriately the

SNUG HARBOR, and many a poor mariner has since found safe moorings

there, when no longer able to follow his perilous calling. The

benevolent-hearted sailor who founded this noble charity could hardly

have dreamed that the small property which he bequeathed for that

purpose, could ever increase to the magnificent sum which it is now

valued at. The income from the estate in the year 1806 was but a

little more than four thousand dollars; it is now thirty-seven

thousand dollars, and will be, next year, when the leases of the

property have to be renewed, at least sixty thousand dollars a year,

an income abundantly large to support even in luxurious comfort the

worn-out tars who may be compelled by misfortune to seek this

magnificent asylum. The trustees of the Snug Harbor are about to build

extensive additions to the present accommodations for it inmates, and

among the new buildings will be a hospital for the insane. There is no

chapel attached to the Snug Harbor, but there is a regular chaplain

who performs religious services every Sunday in the large hall in the

centre building.

In front of the principal edifice a plain monument of white marble has

been erected by the trustees in memory of Captain Randall, the founder

of the institution, which is chiefly remarkable for the omission, in

the inscription, of any information respecting the birth or death of

the person in whose honor it was erected.

[Illustration: THE SAILOR'S HOME.]

It is somewhat remarkable that New-York has originated every system

for bettering the temporal and spiritual condition of seamen, that now

exists, and furnished the models of the various institutions for the

benefit of sea-faring men which have been successfully copied in other

maritime cities of the new and the old world. It was here that the

first chapel was built for the exclusive use of sailors and their

families, the Mariner's chapel in Roosevelt-street; and it was here,

too, that the first Home was erected for the residence, while on

shore, of homeless sailors. The corner-stone of the Home in

Cherry-street was laid with appropriate ceremonies on the 14th of

October, 1841, just twenty-two years from the day on which the

corner-stone of the Mariner's chapel was laid in Roosevelt-street. The

building is a well constructed house of brick with a granite basement,

plain and substantial, without any pretensions to architectural

ornamentation. It is six stories high, fifty feet front, and one

hundred and sixty feet deep. It contains one hundred and thirty

sleeping-rooms, a dining-room one hundred by twenty-five feet, and a

spacious reading-room, in which are a well selected library, and a

museum of natural curiosities; there are also suitable apartments for

the overseer and officers. About five hundred boarders can be

accommodated in the Home, but it is not often filled. The Sailor's

Home was built by the Seaman's Friend Society, and is intended to

furnish sailors with a comfortable and orderly home, where they will

not be subject to the rapacities of unprincipled landlords, nor the

temptations which usually beset this useful but improvident class of

men when they are on shore.

[Illustration: U.S. MARINE HOSPITAL, BROOKLYN.]

The Marine Hospital at the Wallabout, Brooklyn, near the Navy Yard,

belongs to the government of the United States, and is intended for

the use of the sailors and officers of the navy, and none others. It

was built from a fund called the hospital fund, which is created by a

payment of twenty cents a month by all the officers and seamen of the

navy. The Hospital stands on high ground, on one of the healthiest and

pleasantest spots in the vicinity of New-York, commands a superb view

of the East River as it sweeps toward the Sound, and overlooks both

Brooklyn and New-York. The buildings constituting the Hospital are two

fine large airy edifices constructed of white marble, with galleries

and piazzas, and surrounded by well-kept grounds which abound with

choice fruit trees, and every requisite for the health and comfort of

the invalids. The patients remain there only while under treatment for

disease. Our government has no asylum for the support of the sailors

or soldiers who lose their health or limbs in its service, like the

hospitals of Greenwich and Chelsea, and, in this respect at least, we

are behind the government of Great Britain, which makes ample and

generous provision for all classes and grades of public servants.

As New-York was the first maritime city that built a chapel expressly

for seamen, so it was the first to build a floating church, for

although there had been previously in London and Liverpool old hulks

fitted up as chapels, and moored in the docks for the use of sailors,

there had never been an actual church edifice put afloat before the

FLOATING CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOUR, which now lies moored at the foot of

Pike-street, in the East River. This novel edifice was finished and

consecrated in February, 1844. It is under the charge of the Young

Men's Church Missionary Society of the City of New-York, by whom it

was built, and has been under the pastoral care of the Rev. B. C. C.

Parker, of the Episcopal church, from its consecration to the present

time. It is seventy feet long, and thirty feet wide, and will

comfortably seat five hundred persons. It has an end gallery, in which

is an organ. A beautiful baptismal font of white marble, in the shape

of a capstan, surmounted by a seashell, chiselled from the same block

with the shaft--the gift of St. Mark's church in the Bowery,

New-York--stands in front of the chancel rail. The top of the

communion-table is a marble slab, and the Ten Commandments are placed

on the panels on each side in the recess over it. An anchor in gold,

painted on the back-ground between these panels, rests upon the Bible

and prayer-book. The roof, at the apex, is twenty-six feet high, and

eleven feet at the eaves. The edifice is built on a broad deck,

seventy-six by thirty-six feet, covering two boats of eighty tons

each, placed ten feet apart. The spire contains a bell, and the top of

the flag-staff is about seventy feet from the deck. Divine service is

regularly performed on Sundays, commencing in the morning at half-past

ten, and in the afternoon at three o'clock. Both the boats on which

the edifice rests are well coppered, and protected from injury by

booms placed around them.

[Illustration: THE FLOATING CHURCH OF OUR SAVIOUR.]

A similar floating church has been built and moored near

Rector-street, in the North River, near which is another floating

chapel, formed of an old hulk, after the manner of the first floating

chapels in London. In addition to these houses of worship for seamen,

there is a large and handsome church for sailors near the "Home," in

Cherry-street, under the charge of the Baptists, and a small seamen's

chapel in Brooklyn, near the Catharine Ferry. To complete this system

of benevolent enterprises for the benefit of sailors, there is a

Seaman's Savings Bank in Wall-street, a very handsome structure of

brown free-stone, in the third story of which are the offices of the

Seaman's Friend Society.

In Franklin Square, which, at the time of Washington's last visit to

New-York, bore about the same relation to the heart of the city that

Union Square and Grammercy Park now do, being the Ultima Thule of

fashion, and the very focus of gentility and aristocracy, there is the

Sailor's Home for colored seamen, which has been most respectably

conducted on the principle of the "Home" in Cherry-street, and under

the supervision of, although not belonging to, the Seaman's Friend

Society. The Colored Home consists of two respectable three-story

brick buildings, and is next door to the old Walton House, which is

the last remnant of ante-revolutionary splendor remaining in the

commercial metropolis of the Union, which once abounded in stately old

mansions full of historical mementoes of the days when we acknowledged

to kingly authority.

The principle of compelling men, when they have means, to lay up a

trifle against the exigencies of a rainy day, has worked well, as we

have seen, when applied to the most improvident of all the laboring

classes, and we are not sure but the same principle applied to other

classes would not prove equally beneficial. If the law should require

every author, or merchant, or broker, or editor, to pay a monthly

stipend to provide houses of refuge for the needy of their class, it

would be only carrying out the principle of government which has been

applied to seamen, and might save many a poor wretch from committing

suicide to avoid the fate of a pauper.

[Illustration: A CUB OF THE BARN-YARD]

RURAL LIFE IN VIRGINIA: THE "SWALLOW BARN."

We remember no book of its class altogether more delightful than the

"Swallow Barn" of JOHN P. KENNEDY. In Irving's "Bracebridge Hall" we

have exquisite sketches of English homes, such sketches as could be

drawn only by that graceful and genial humorist, but Bracebridge Hall

is not in our own country, and we scarcely feel "at our own" in it, as

we do in every scene to which we are introduced by the author of

"Swallow Barn," the best painter of manners who has ever tried his

hand at their delineation in America. The love of nature, the fine

appreciation of a country life, the delicate and quiet humor, and

hearty joy in every one's enjoyment, which those who know Mr. Kennedy

personally will recognize as principal elements of his own character,

are reflected in the pages of the book, and with its other good

qualities make it one of the most charming compositions in the

literature of the present time.

Mr. Putnam in a few days will publish a new edition of "Swallow Barn,"

profusely illustrated by Mr. Strother, an artist who seems perfectly

at home in the Old Dominion, as if--which may be the case--all his

life had been spent there. Some of these we shall transfer to our own

pages, but first we copy in full Mr. Kennedy's "Word in Advance to the

Reader":

"Swallow Barn was written twenty years ago, and was

published in a small edition, which was soon exhausted. From

that date it has disappeared from the bookstores, being

carelessly consigned by the author to that oblivion which is

common to books and men--out of sight, out of mind. Upon a

recent reviewal of it, after an interval sufficiently long

to obliterate the partialities with which one is apt to

regard his own productions, I have thought it was worthy of

more attention than I had bestowed upon it, and was, at

least, entitled to the benefit of a second edition. In

truth, its republication has been so often advised by

friends, and its original reception was so prosperous, that

I have almost felt it to be a duty once more to set it

afloat upon the waters, for the behoof of that good-natured

company of idle readers who are always ready to embark on a

pleasure excursion in any light craft that offers. I have,

therefore, taken these volumes in hand, and given them a

somewhat critical revisal. Twenty years work sufficient

change upon the mind of an author to render him, perhaps

more than others, a fastidious critic of his own book. If

the physiologists are right, he is not the same person after

that lapse of time; and all that his present and former self

may claim in common, are those properties which belong to

his mental consciousness, of which his aspiration after fame

is one. The present self may, therefore, be expected to

examine more rigorously the work of that former and younger

person, for whom he is held responsible. This weighty

consideration will be sufficient to account for the few

differences which may be found between this and the first

edition. Some quaintness of the vocabulary has been got rid

of--some dialogue has been stript of its redundancy--some

few thoughts have been added--and others retrenched. I shall

be happy to think that the reader will agree with me that

these are improvements:--I mean the reader who may happen to

belong to that small and choice corps who read these volumes

long ago--a little troop of friends of both sexes, to whom I

have reason to be grateful for that modicum of good opinion

which cheered my first authorship. Health and joy to them

all--as many as are now alive! I owe them a thanksgiving for

their early benevolence.

"Swallow Barn exhibits a picture of country life in

Virginia, as it existed in the first quarter of the present

century. Between that period and the present day, time and

what is called "the progress," have made many innovations

there, as they have done every where else. The Old Dominion

is losing somewhat of the raciness of her once peculiar,

and--speaking in reference to the locality described in

these volumes--insulated cast of manners. The mellow, bland,

and sunny luxuriance of her home society--its good

fellowship, its hearty and constitutional

_companionableness_, the thriftless gayety of the people,

their dogged but amiable invincibility of opinion, and that

overflowing hospitality which knew no ebb--these traits,

though far from being impaired, are modified at the present

day by circumstances which have been gradually attaining a

marked influence over social life as well as political

relation. An observer cannot fail to note that the manners

of our country have been tending towards a uniformity which

is visibly effacing all local differences. The old states,

especially, are losing their original distinctive habits and

modes of life, and in the same degree, I fear, are losing

their exclusive American character. A traveller may detect

but few sectional or provincial varieties in the general

observances and customs of society, in comparison with what

were observable in the past generations, and the pride, or

rather the vanity, of the present day is leading us into a

very notable assimilation with foreign usages. The country

now apes the city in what is supposed to be the elegancies

of life, and the city is inclined to value and adopt the

fashions it is able to import across the Atlantic, and thus

the whole surface of society is exhibiting the traces of a

process by which it is likely to be rubbed down, in time, to

one level, and varnished with the same gloss. It may thus

finally arrive at a comfortable insipidity of character

which may not be willingly reckoned as altogether a due

compensation for the loss of that rough but pleasant flavor

which belonged to it in its earlier era. There is much good

sense in that opinion which ascribes a wholesome influence

to those homebred customs, which are said to strengthen

local attachments and expand them into love of country. What

belonged to us as characteristically American, seems already

to be dissolving into a mixture which affects us

unpleasantly as a plain and cosmopolitan substitute for the

old warmth and salient vivacity of our ancestors. We no

longer present in our pictures of domestic life so much as

an earnest lover of our nationality might desire of what

abroad is called the "red bird's wing"--something which

belongs to us and to no one else. The fruitfulness of modern

invention in the arts of life, the general fusion of thought

through the medium of an extra-territorial literature, which

from its easy domestication among us is scarcely regarded as

foreign, the convenience and comfort of European customs

which have been incorporated into our scheme of living,--all

these, aided and diffused by our extraordinary facilities of

travel and circulation, have made sad work, even in the

present generation, with those old _nationalisms_ that were

so agreeable to the contemplation of an admirer of the

picturesque in character and manners.

[Illustration: THE "SWALLOW BARN."]

"Looking myself somewhat hopelessly upon this onward gliding

of the stream, I am not willing to allow these sketches of

mine entirely to pass away. They have already begun to

assume the tints of a relic of the past, and may, in another

generation, become archaeological, and sink into the chapter

of antiquities. Presenting, as I make bold to say, a

faithful picture of the people, the modes of life, and the

scenery of a region full of attraction, and exhibiting the

lights and shades of its society with the truthfulness of a

painter who has studied his subject on the spot, they may

reasonably claim their accuracy of delineation to be set off

as an extenuation for any want of skill or defect of finish

which a fair criticism may charge against the artist. Like

some sign-post painters, I profess to make a strong

likeness, even if it should be thought to be _hard_,--and

what better workmen might call a daub,--as to which I must

leave my reader to judge for himself when he has read this

book. The outward public award on this point was kind, and

bestowed quite as much praise as I could have desired--much

more than I expected--when the former edition appeared. But

"the progress" has brought out many competitors since that

day, and has, perhaps, rendered the public taste more

scrupulous. A book then was not so perilous an offering as

it is now in the great swarm of authorships. We run more

risk, just now, of being left alone--unread--untalked

of--though not, happily, unpuffed by newspapers, who are

favorites with the publisher, and owe him courtesies.

"I wish it to be noted that Swallow Barn is not a novel. I

confess this in advance, although I may lose by it. It was

begun on the plan of a series of detached sketches linked

together by the hooks and eyes of a traveller's notes; and

although the narrative does run into some by-paths of

personal adventure, it has still preserved its desultory,

sketchy character to the last. It is, therefore, utterly

unartistic in plot and structure, and may be described as

variously and interchangeably partaking of the complexion of

a book of travels, a diary, a collection of letters, a

drama, and a history,--and this, serial or compact, as the

reader may choose to compute it. Our old friend Polonius had

nearly hit it in his rigmarole of 'pastoral-comical,

tragical-comical-historical-pastoral'--which, saving 'the

tragical,' may well make up my schedule: and so I leave it

to the 'censure' of my new reader."

[Illustration: VIRGINIA MILL-BOYS RACING.]

Here the history of the book is admirably told. The work itself, so

full of truthful and effective pictures, offers numerous passages for

quotation, but though we have nothing better to give our readers, we

shall limit our extracts to a few scenes illustrated by Mr. Strother's

pencil. We present first the old barn itself.

"Beyond the bridge, at some distance, stands a prominent

object in the perspective of this picture,--the most

venerable appendage to the establishment--a huge barn with

an immense roof hanging almost to the ground, and thatched a

foot thick with sunburnt straw, which reaches below the

eaves in ragged flakes. It has a singularly drowsy and

decrepit aspect. The yard around it is strewed knee-deep

with litter, from the midst of which arises a long rack

resembling a chevaux de frise, which is ordinarily filled

with fodder. This is the customary lounge of half a score of

oxen and as many cows, who sustain an imperturbable

companionship with a sickly wagon, whose parched tongue and

drooping swingle-trees, as it stands in the sun, give it a

most forlorn and invalid character; whilst some sociable

carts under the sheds, with their shafts perched against the

walls, suggest the idea of a set of gossiping cronies taking

their ease in a tavern porch. Now and then a clownish

hobble-de-hoy colt, with long fetlocks and disordered mane,

and a thousand burs in his tail, stalks through this

company. But as it is forbidden ground to all his tribe, he

is likely very soon to encounter a shower of corn-cobs from

some of the negro men; upon which contingency he makes a

rapid retreat across the bars which imperfectly guard the

entrance to the yard, and with an uncouth display of his

heels bounds towards the brook, where he stops and looks

back with a saucy defiance; and after affecting to drink for

a moment, gallops away with a braggart whinny to the

fields."

The life led by the young negroes on the plantations of Virginia is

generally easy, and of course utterly free from the cares which beset

their youthful masters, compelled to pore over "miserable books."

"There is a numerous herd of little negroes about the

estate; and these sometimes afford us a new diversion. A few

mornings since we encountered a horde of them, who were

darting about the bushes like untamed monkeys. They are

afraid of me because I am a stranger, and take to their

heels as soon as they see me. If I ever chance to get near

enough to speak to one of them, he stares at me with a

suspicious gaze, and, after a moment, makes off at full

speed, very much frightened, towards the cabins at some

distance from the house. They are almost all clad in a long

coarse shirt which reaches below the knee, without any other

garment. But one of the group we met on the morning I speak

of, was oddly decked in a pair of ragged trowsers,

conspicuous for their ample dimensions in the seat. These

had evidently belonged to some grown-up person, but were cut

short in the legs to make them fit the wearer. A piece of

twine across the shoulder of this grotesque imp, served for

suspenders, and kept his habiliments from falling about his

feet. Ned ordered this crew to prepare for a foot-race, and

proposed a reward of a piece of money to the winner. They

were to run from a given point, about a hundred paces

distant, to the margin of the brook. Our whole suite of dogs

were in attendance, and seemed to understand our pastime. At

the word, away went the bevy, accompanied by every dog of

the pack, the negroes shouting and the dogs yelling in

unison. The shirts ran with prodigious speed, their speed

exposing their bare, black, and meager shanks to the scandal

of all beholders; and the strange baboon in trowsers

struggled close in their rear, with ludicrous earnestness,

holding up his redundant and troublesome apparel with his

hand. In a moment they reached the brook with unchecked

speed, and, as the banks were muddy, and the dogs had become

entangled with the racers in their path, two or three were

precipitated into the water. This only increased the

merriment, and they continued the contest in this new

element by floundering, kicking, and splashing about, like a

brood of ducks in their first descent upon a pool. These

young negroes have wonderfully flat noses, and the most

oddly disproportioned mouths, which were now opened to their

full dimensions, so as to display their white teeth in

striking contrast with their complexions. They are a strange

pack of antic and careless animals, and furnish the

liveliest picture that is to be found in nature of that race

of swart fairies, which, in the old time, were supposed to

play their pranks in the forest at moonlight. Ned stood by,

enjoying this scene like an amateur--encouraging the negroes

in their gambols, and hallooing to the dogs, that by a

kindred instinct entered tumultuously into the sport and

kept up the confusion. It was difficult to decide the

contest. So the money was thrown into the air, and as it

fell to ground, there was another rush, in which the hero of

the trowsers succeeded in getting the small coin from the

ground in his teeth, somewhat to the prejudice of his

finery.

[Illustration: DRILLING THE NEGRO BOYS.]

"Rip asserts a special pre-eminence over these young serfs,

and has drilled them into a kind of local militia. He

sometimes has them all marshalled in the yard, and

entertains us with a review. They have an old watering-pot

for a drum, and a dingy pocket handkerchief for a standard,

under which they are arrayed in military order, and parade

over the grounds with a riotous clamor."

[Illustration: TREADING OUT WHEAT.]

The farmers of Virginia are scarcely as far advanced in the

application of science as the more active-minded Yankees, and among

the ancient customs which still obtain among them is that of treading

out grain with cattle. At Swallow Barn the operation is described:

"Within the farm-yard a party of negroes were engaged in

treading out grain. About a dozen horses were kept at full

trot around a circle of some ten or fifteen paces diameter,

which was strewed with wheat in the sheaf. These were

managed by some five or six little blacks, who rode like

monkey caricaturists of the games of the circus, and who

mingled with the labors of the place that comic air of

deviltry which communicated to the whole employment

something of the complexion of a pastime."

We hope this edition of _Swallow Barn_ will be so well received that

the author will give us all his other works in the same attractive

style. _Horse-shoe Robinson_, _Rob of the Bowl_, _Quodlibet_, and all

the rest, except the _Life of Wirt_, are now out of print, and all

have been greeted on their first appearance with an approval that

should satisfy a more ambitious writer than Mr. Kennedy.

[Illustration]

GEORGE H. BOKER.

[Illustration]

Mr. Boker is one of the youngest of American authors. He is a native

of Philadelphia, and was born, we believe, in the year 1824. After the

usual preparatory studies in the city of his birth, he entered the

college at Princeton, New Jersey, of which he is a graduate. In

addition to the collegiate course, however, he devoted much time to

the study of Anglo-Saxon, and to the perusal of the early masters of

English literature, whose influence is discernible in all his earlier

poems. Soon after leaving college he made a visit to France and

England, but was obliged to return after having been but a short time

abroad, owing to the critical state of his health. He was at that time

suffering under a pulmonary disease which threatened to be fatal, but

all symptoms of which, fortunately, have since disappeared. On his

return he took up his residence in Philadelphia, which continues to be

his home. Three or four years since he was married to an accomplished

lady of that city.

Mr. Boker first appeared as an author at the commencement of the year

1848, when a volume of his poems, under the title of _The Lesson of

Life_, was published in Philadelphia. The publication of a volume was

no light ordeal to a young poet whose name was unknown, and who, we

believe, had never before seen himself in print. The lack of

self-observation and self-criticism, which can only be acquired when

the author's thoughts have taken the matter-of-fact garb of type,

would of itself be sufficient to obscure much real promise. In spite

of these disadvantages, the book contained much that gave the reader

the impression of a mind of genuine and original power. We remember

being puzzled at its seeming incongruity, the bold, mature, and

masculine character of its thought being so strikingly at variance

with its frequent crudities of expression. It seemed to us the work of

a man in the prime of life, whose poetic feeling had taken a sudden

growth, and moved somewhat unskilfully in the unaccustomed trammels of

words, rather than the first essay of a brain glowing with the fresh

inspiration of youth.

No one saw the author's imperfections sooner than himself; and before

the year had closed, his tragedy of _Calaynos_ was published--a work

so far in advance of what he had hitherto accomplished, so full, not

only of promise for the future, but of actual performance, that it

took his most confident friends by surprise. To write a five act

tragedy is also a bold undertaking; but there is an old French proverb

which, says, "if you would shoot lions, don't begin by aiming at

hares," and we believe there are fewer failures from attempting too

much than from being content with too little. The success of

_Calaynos_ showed that the author had not aimed beyond his reach. The

book attracted considerable attention, and its merits as a vigorous

and original play, were very generally recognized. Although written

with no view to its representation on the stage, it did not escape the

notice of actors and managers, and a copy happening to fall into the

hands of Mr. Phelps, a distinguished English tragedian, it was first

performed under his direction at the Theatre Royal, Saddler's Wells,

Mr. Phelps himself taking the part of Calaynos. Its success as an

acting play was most decided, and after keeping the stage at Saddler's

Wells twenty or thirty nights, it went the round of the provinces. It

has already been performed more than a hundred times in different

parts of Great Britain.

_Calaynos_ gives evidence of true dramatic genius. The characters are

distinct and clearly drawn, and their individualities carefully

preserved through all the movements of the plot, which is natural and

naturally developed. The passion on which the action hinges, is the

prejudice of blood between the Spanish and Moorish families of Spain.

The interest of the plot, while it never loses sight of the hero, is

shared in the first three acts by the other personages of the story,

but concentrates at the close on Calaynos, whose outbursts of love and

grief and revenge are drawn with striking power and eloquence. The

play is enlivened with many humorous passages, wherein the author

shows his mastery of this element, so necessary to the complete

dramatist.

Mr. Boker's next publication was the tragedy of _Anne Boleyn_, which

appeared in February, 1850. In this work he touched on more familiar

ground, and in some instances, in his treatment of historical

characters, came in conflict with the opinions or prejudices of the

critics. The necessity of adhering to history in the arrangement of

the plot and selection of the dramatis personae, imposed some restraint

on the author's mind, and hence, while _Anne Boleyn_ exhibits a calmer

and more secure strength, and a riper artistic knowledge than

_Calaynos_, it lacks the fire and passionate fervor of some passages

of the latter. We should not forget, however, that the Thames has a

colder and sadder sun than the Guadalquiver. Objections have been made

to Mr. Boker's King Henry, especially to his complaint of the torments

of his conscience, and his moralizing over Norris's ingratitude. But

those who cavil at these points seem to forget that however vile and

heartless King Henry appears to them, he is a very different man to

himself. The author's idea--and it is true to human nature--evidently

is, that a criminal is not always guilty to his own mind. This marked

insensibility of King Henry to his own false and corrupt nature is a

subtle stroke of art.

The language of the tragedy is strong, terse, and full of point,

approaching the sturdy Saxon idiom of the early English dramatists. We

might quote many passages in support of our opinion, as, for instance,

the scene between the Queen and her brother, Lord Rochford; between

the Queen and King Henry; Wyatt and Rochford, and King Henry and Jane

Seymour. Two or three brief extracts we cannot avoid giving. Wyatt and

Rochford are in "The Safety," the thieves' quarter of London--the St.

Giles of that day. Wyatt speaks:

"I oft have thought the watchful eye of God

Upon this place ne'er rested; or that hell

Had raised so black a smoke of densest sin

That the All-Beautiful, appalled, shrunk back

From its fierce ugliness. I tell you, friend,

When the great treason, which shall surely come

To burst in shards law-bound society,

Gives the first shudder, ere it grinds to dust

Thrones, ranks, and fortunes, and most cunning law--

When the great temple of our social state

Staggers and throbs, and totters back to chaos--

Let men look here, here in this fiery mass

Of aged crime and primal ignorance,

For the hot heart of all the mystery!--

Here, on this howling sea, let fall the scourge,

Or pour the oil of mercy!

_Rochford._ Pour the oil--

In God's name, pour the blessed oil! The scourge,

Bloody and fierce, has fallen for ages past

Upon the foreward crests within its reach;

Yet made no more impression on the mass

Than Persia's whips upon the Hellespont!"

Wyatt's soliloquy on beholding Queen Anne led forth to execution is

full of a rare and subtle beauty, both of thought and expression:

"O Anne, Anne!

The world may banish all regard for thee,

Mewing thy fame in frigid chronicles,

But every memory that haunts my mind

Shall cluster round thee still. _I'll hide thy name

Under the coverture of even lines,

I'll hint it darkly in familiar songs_,

I'll mix each melancholy thought of thee

Through all my numbers: _so that heedless men

Shall hold my love for thee within their hearts,

Not knowing of the treasure_."

The last scene, preceding the death of Anne Boleyn, is simple and

almost homely in its entire want of poetic imagery; yet nothing could

be more profoundly touching, and--in the highest sense of the

word--tragic. The same tears which blur for us the lines of Browning's

_Blot on the 'Scutcheon_, and the last words of Shelley's _Beatrice

Cenci_, suffuse our eyes at this parting address of Anne Boleyn to her

maidens, beside her on the scaffold:

"And ye, my damsels,

Who whilst I lived did ever show yourselves

So diligent in service, and are now

To be here present in my latest hour

Of mortal agony--as in good times

Ye were most trustworthy, even so in this,

My miserable death, ye leave me not.

As a poor recompense for your rich love,

I pray you to take comfort for my loss--

And yet forget me not. To the king's grace,

And to the happier one whom you may serve

In place of me, be faithful as to me.

Learn from this scene, the triumph of my fate,

To hold your honors far above your lives.

When you are praying to the martyred Christ,

Remember me who, as my weakness could,

Faltered afar behind His shining steps,

And died for truth, forgiving all mankind.

The Lord have pity on my helpless soul!"

Since the publication of _Anne Boleyn_, Mr. Boker has written two

plays, _The Betrothal_, and _All the World a Mask_, both of which have

been produced on the stage in Philadelphia with the most entire

success. _Calaynos_ was also played for a number of nights, Mr.

Murdoch taking the principal part. _The Betrothal_ was performed in

New-York and Baltimore, with equal success. It is admirably adapted

for an acting play. The plot is not tragic, though the closing scenes

have a tragic air. The dialogue is more varied than in _Anne Boleyn_

or _Calaynos_--now sparkling and full of point, now pithy, shrewd, and

pregnant with worldly wisdom, and now tender, graceful, and poetic.

_All the World a Mask_ is a comedy of modern life. We have not seen it

represented, and it has not yet been published; yet no one familiar

with the fine healthy humor displayed in portions of _Calaynos_ and

_The Betrothal_ can doubt the author's ability to sustain himself

through a five-act comedy.

In addition to these plays, Mr. Boker has published from time to time,

in the literary magazines, lyrics and ballads that would of themselves

entitle him to rank among our most worthy poets. It is rare that a

dramatic author possesses lyric genius, and _vice versa_, yet the true

lyric inspiration is no less perceptible in Mr. Boker's _Song of the

Earth_ and _Vision of the Goblet_, than the true dramatic faculty in

his _Anne Boleyn_.

There is a fresh, manly strength in his poetry, which may sometimes

jar the melody a little, but never allows his verse to flag. The life

which informs it was inhaled in the open air; it is sincere and

earnest, and touched with that fine enthusiasm which is the

heart's-blood of lyric poetry. Take, for instance, this glorious

Bacchic, from the _Vision of the Goblet_:

"Joy! joy! with Bacchus and his satyr train,

In triumph throbs our merry Grecian earth;

Joy! joy! the golden time has come again,

A god shall bless the vine's illustrious birth!

Io, io, Bacche!

"O breezes, speed across the mellow lands,

And breathe his coming to the joyous vine;

Let all the vineyards wave their leafy hands

Upon the hills to greet this pomp divine!

Io, io, Bacche!

"O peaceful triumph, victory without tear,

Or human cry, or drop of conquered blood!

Save dew-beads bright, that on the vine appear,

The choral shouts, the trampled grape's red flood!

Io, io, Bacche!

"Shout, Hellas, shout! the lord of joy is come,

Bearing the mortal Lethe in his hands,

To wake the wailing lips of Sorrow dumb,

To bind sad Memory's eyes with rosy bands:

Io, io, Bacche!"

In the _Song of the Earth_, which shows a higher exercise of the

poetic faculty than any thing else Mr. Boker has written, he has

enriched the language with a new form of versification. Except in this

poem, we do not remember ever to have seen _dactylic_ blank verse

attempted in the English language. The majestic and resonant harmonies

of the measure are strikingly adapted to the poet's theme. The

concluding _Chorus of Stars_, rebuking the Earth for her pride as the

dwelling-place of the human soul, is a splendid effort of the

imagination. We know not where to find surpassed the sounding sweep of

the rhythm in the final lines:

"Heir of eternity, Mother of Souls,

Let not thy knowledge betray thee to folly!

Knowledge is proud, self-sufficient, and lone,

Trusting, unguided, its steps in the darkness.

Thine is the wisdom that mankind may win,

Gleaned in the pathway between joy and sorrow;

Ours is the wisdom that hallows the child

Fresh from the touch of his awful Creator,

Dropped like a star on thy shadowy realm,

Falling in splendor, but falling to darken.

Ours is the simple religion of Faith,

Trusting alone in the God who o'errules us;

Thine are the complex misgivings of Doubt,

Wrested to form by imperious Reason.

_Knowledge is restless, imperfect, and sad;

Faith is serene, and completed, and joyful._

Bow in humility, bow thy proud forehead,

Circle thy form with a mantle of clouds,

_Hide from the glittering cohorts of evening,

Wheeling in purity, singing in chorus:

Howl in the depths of thy lone, barren mountains,

Restlessly moan on the deserts of ocean,

Wail o'er thy fall in the desolate forests,

Lost star of Paradise, straying alone!_"

In the flush of youth, fortunate in all the relations of life, and

with a fame already secured, there is perhaps no American author to

whom the future promises more than to Mr. Boker. He has that faithful

reverence for his art which makes harmless the breath of praise, more

dangerous to the poet than that of censure, and there are yet many

years before him ere his mind attains its full scope and stature. That

all these promises may be fulfilled, to his own honor and that of

American literature, is the earnest hope of

BAYARD TAYLOR.

HERR FLEISCHMANN

ON THE INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL LIFE OF THE AMERICANS.

In the careful watch we keep of French, German, and other foreign

literatures, for what will instruct or entertain the readers of the

_International_, we are always sharp-sighted for any thing said of us

or our institutions, whether it be in sympathy or in antipathy. So,

for a recent number, we translated from the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ a

very clever paper on our American Female Poets, and on other occasions

have reviewed or done into English a great many compositions which

evinced the feeling of continental Europe in regard to our character

and movements. We shall continue in this habit, as there is scarcely

any thing ever more amusing than "what the world says" of our

concerns, even when it is in the least amiable temper.

Among the most interesting works published of late months in Germany,

is FLEISCHMANN'S _Erwerbszweige der Vereinigten Staaten

Nord-America's_, (or Branches of Industry in the United States.) The

reader who anticipates from this title a mere mass of statistics

relative to the industrial condition of our own country will find

himself agreeably disappointed. Statistics are indeed there--lists of

figures and relative annual arrays of products, sufficient to satisfy

any one that Mr. Fleischmann has turned the several years during which

he was connected with the Patent Office at Washington to good account.

But in addition to this there is a mass of information and

observation, which, though nearly connected with the subject, was yet

hardly to be expected. It is doubtful whether the social and domestic

peculiarities of others or of ourselves be most attractive, but to

those who prefer the latter, and who have lived as many do under the

impression that our own habits and ways of life present little that is

marked or distinctive, this work will be found not only interesting,

but even amusing. For among those practising branches of industry, he

not only includes blacksmiths, coopers, architects, planters, and

pin-makers, but also clergymen, actors, circus-riders, model-artists,

midwives, and boarding-house keepers! The main object of the work

being to inform his countrymen who propose emigration, of the true

state of the most available branches of industry in this country, and

prevent on their part undue anticipation or disappointment, even these

items cannot be deemed out of place. Cherishing an enthusiastic

admiration of our country, and better informed in all probability in

the branches of which he treats than any foreigner who has before

ventured upon the subject, it is not astonishing that he should have

produced a work which not only fully answers the object intended, but

in a faithful translation would doubtless be extensively read by our

own countrymen.

The reader will find in this book many _little_ traits of our domestic

life, which, commonplace though they be, are not unattractive when

thus reflected back on us, mirror-like, from another land. Take for

example the following account of confectioners:

"All men are more or less fond of sweet food and dainties,

and the wealthier a people may be, and consequently in more

fit condition to add such luxuries to the necessaries of

life, the greater will be its consumption of sugar. If we

compare the sugar consumption of England with that of

Germany, we find the first consumes a far greater quantity

per head than the latter.

"And in this respect the Americans are in no wise behind the

English, since they not only at least twice a day drink

either tea or coffee, which they abundantly sweeten,

enjoying therewith vast quantities of preserved fruits, and

every variety of cakes, but they have universally a

remarkable appetite for sweets, which from childhood up is

nourished with all sorts of confectionery. And this appetite

is very generally retained even to an advanced age, so that

all the _cents_ of the children, and many of the dollars of

those more advanced in life, go to the _candy-shops_ and

_confectioneries_. Add to this the numerous balls,

marriages, and other festive occasions, particularly the

parties in private houses, at which pyramids, temples, and

other architectural and artistic works, founded on rocks of

candied sugar, and bonsbons, are never wanting, we can

readily imagine that in this country the confectioner's

trade is a flourishing and brilliant business.

"The Americans are, as is well known, universally a

remarkably hospitable people, not only frequently

entertaining guests in their homes, but also holding it as

an established point of _bon ton_, to give one or two

parties annually, to which _all_ their friends are invited.

The evening is then spent with music and dancing, concluded

with an extremely elegant (_hochst elegant_) supper, at

which the gentlemen wisely stick to the more substantial

viands and champagne, but where abundance of sugar-work for

the ladies is never wanting.

"And since no family will be surpassed by another, the most

incredible extravagance not infrequently results from this

unfortunate spirit of rivalry. Confectionery is often

brought for a certain party expressly from France, fresh

fruits from the West Indies, and the stairways and rooms are

adorned with the most exquisite flowers which Europe can

yield, while the guests are served on costly porcelain and

massive plate. In a word, the greatest imaginable expense is

lavished on these festive occasions, which prevail in every

class of society, and in none--be their degree what it

may--are sugared sweets wanting: the poorer confining

themselves, it is true, to such dainties as are the

production of the country, excepting indeed a few bottles of

champagne, which latter is absolutely indispensable.

"I have deemed it necessary to touch upon these

extravagances of American life, that I might show that while

on the one hand an expert confectioner may readily find

employment during the season, on the other that mere skill

and industry are by no means sufficient of themselves to

support an establishment grounded on credit.

"Nearly all the small shopkeepers, fruit-dealers, and

bar-keepers, sell candy and sugar-cakes, which they either

prepare themselves or obtain from confectioners who not only

carry on a wholesale business, _but even send large

quantities of their products to the country dealers_. In

Philadelphia, warm cakes are carried about for sale in the

streets,[1] the bearers thereof announcing their presence by

the sound of a bell. French confectioners have already done

much in this country toward improving the public taste, and

excellent _bonsbons a la francaise_ are now actually

manufactured here, though we must admit that in the country

there is a great consumption of confectionery and cakes by

no means of a very good quality. In these regions a taste

for '_horses_' (which are of cake greatly resembling

gingerbread and made in the form of a horse) universally

predominates, and not only children but even adults select

these as a favorite dainty. It is no unusual spectacle to

behold in the northern states an entire court--judge, jury,

and lawyers--regaling themselves during an important trial

on horse-cakes!"

Whether Herr Fleischmann received this legal anecdote on hearsay, or

whether his German soul was actually startled by stumbling upon such

an extraordinary legal spectacle, we will not here inquire. In Germany

the favorite dainty in this line is a _pretzel_, or carnival cake, in

the form of a two-headed serpent, which antiquaries declare to be of

oriental origin, and to conceal divers horrific mysteries of deeply

metaphysical import. From the solemnity of tone with which Herr

Fleischmann imparts this horse-cake story, we are half inclined to

suspect that he inferred that a great ethical mystery, in some way

connected with the administration of justice in America, might thus be

conveyed.

Under the head of spirit distilleries our author enters into a _naif_

and enthusiastic defence of good brandy, but still highly approves of

the American custom of substituting coffee for grog in merchant

vessels, on which he remarks that it is not allowed to soldiers or

sailors to bring spirits into the forts or ships. "But they are so

extravagantly fond of liquor as to invent every imaginable method of

evading the regulation. I have been told," he says, "by persons of the

highest credibility that during the night whisky is not unfrequently

brought to the vicinity of military stations, and that the sentinels,

after filling the barrels of their muskets therewith, bring it into

the 'watch-room,' and divide the _loading_ with their comrades."

After remarking the melancholy fact, which the strictest examination

would, we fear confirm, in a still higher degree, that the

sewing-girls employed in our umbrella factories, tailor

establishments, &c., are very inadequately paid, he makes a statement

which is, however, glaringly false, that among these poor girls

corruption of manners prevails to a degree unknown in any country of

Europe, save indeed "merry England." Without being familiar with such

statistics, we are on the contrary firmly convinced that though

females in these employments are _not_ so well paid even as in

Germany, there is no country on the face of the earth--most certainly

not in Bavaria, Austria, or Prussia, where the standard of morals is

in this respect so high as in our own. There are a thousand

correlative facts in the state of society in our country which confirm

our assertion. This opinion of our author's is, however, slightly at

variance, as far as appearance is concerned, with a part of the

following good advice to the more beautiful portion of his fair young

countrywomen, who propose repairing to this country for the sake of

catching husbands:

"And I deem this a fit place to give them a warning, which I

have before often repeated, namely, that these lovely

beings, when they forsake their homes, also leave behind

them their fantastic national dress. In this country long

dresses are worn--and not merely frocks which barely reach

the knee, as is usual in several parts of Germany. The same

may be applied to their head-dresses, which are not

unfrequently so eccentric as to give their wearers the

appearance of having escaped from a lunatic asylum. On which

account, I beg my _ladies_, or any women who design

emigrating to this land of equality, to buy themselves

French bonnets,[2] or a similar style of head covering, but

in no instance to run bareheaded about the streets, which is

here remarkably unpopular, since neither widow, wife, nor

maiden, ever appears in the public way without hat or

bonnet. And I moreover beg of them, on their first arrival

in the populous cities, to restrain their manifestations of

affection to the house, where walls are the only witnesses,

_and not to permit their lovers, fiancees, or husbands, to

clasp them about the waist, and lead them in this close

embrace about the streets_, since this would be for

Americans a scandalous spectacle. I will not assert that the

American is incapable of tender feeling, but he at least

observes decency in the public streets, and _apropos_ of

this, I would further remark, that in this country the wife

or maiden invariably walks by the side of her male

companion, and never follows after him in _Indian

file_--that is, like geese returning from pasture."

In his chapter on hat-makers, we are informed that neither French,

Germans, nor English, can in this country compete with the Americans

in the manufacture of hats; and that he was informed by a very

intelligent manufacturer that the work of Germans by no means suited

our market, and further, that within a few years past the use of caps

has increased at least two thirds, though these are by no means so

well adapted to carry papers, &c., as hats, in which Americans are

accustomed to convey their archives.

Of boarding-houses:

"These extremely convenient establishments, in which

lodging, food, and all things requisite, are provided, may

be found in all the cities in the United States; but we

first learn to duly appreciate their value, when, on

returning to Germany, we find ourselves obliged either to

lodge in a hotel, or for a short stay in a place hire and

perhaps furnish rooms for ourselves.

"These communistic institutions, where one person or family

takes care of several, give the _boarder_ all the

conveniences of a hotel, united to the advantages of

dwelling in a private family. He has opportunities of

entering such society as is adapted to his habits and

tastes, in addition to which he has what may be termed a

_chez soi_--he feels that he is 'in house.'[3]

"Such boarding-houses are generally kept by widows or old

maids, and even ladies of the highest families take refuge

in this branch of industry, to maintain respectably

themselves and families.

"Fashionable houses of this sort are splendidly furnished,

and supplied with excellent dishes and attendance. In these

the price is naturally high, since for a room, without fuel,

from six to twelve dollars a week is generally paid. Rooms

in the upper part of the house are of course cheaper. The

parlor is common to all the persons in the house--they meet

there, before and after meals, pass the evening with

reading, music, &c., receive visits, and live in all

respects as if at home.

"The Americans are of a very accommodating

disposition--particularly the men, who, from a regard for

the lady of the house, are easily contented. The ladies, on

the contrary, very frequently indulge in little feuds,

produced by the _ennui_ resulting from a want of domestic

employment, and living in common; but all are on the whole

very circumspect, are careful to live _in Christian love and

unity_ with one another, and never offend external

propriety.

"It is not requisite in America to take a license from the

police to establish a boarding-house, unless a bar-room be

therewith connected. The person undertaking such an

enterprise rents a house, makes it known in newspapers or

among friends, or simply placards on the door

'Boarding'--and the establishment is opened without further

ceremony. Particular introductions and recommendations are

requisite to be received in a boarding-house of higher

rank."

There is even yet a lingering prejudice prevailing in this country in

favor of certain musical instruments of European manufacture, which

this work is well adapted to dissipate, since the author appears to be

in this particular an excellent judge. Take for example his chapter on

pianos:

"The favorite musical instrument of the American ladies is

the piano, and in every family with the slightest

pretensions to education or refinement a piano may certainly

be found, upon which, of an evening, the young 'Miss' plays

to her parents the pieces which she has learned, or

accompanies them with her voice. If the stranger will walk

of an evening through the streets of an American city, he

can hear in almost every house a piano and the song of

youthful voices, often very agreeable, though the latter are

not unfrequently wanting in proper culture. Many of these

amateurs have beyond doubt remarkable talent, and would in

their art attain to a high degree of perfection if they had

better opportunities to hear the best music, to study more

industriously, and practice more than they do, but their

domestic audiences are unfortunately easily pleased, in

consequence of which their knowledge seldom extends beyond

well known opera pieces and favorite popular airs.

"A few years since, pianos were generally imported from

Germany, England, and France, but it was soon found that

their construction and material were by no means adapted to

withstand the changes of the American climate; and it was

also found that the enormous profit cleared by the

importers, might quite as well be retained in this country,

and there are consequently, at present, in Boston, New-York,

Philadelphia, and even Baltimore, excellent and extensive

'piano forte manufactories,' in which every portion of these

instruments is constructed. For this purpose the best

varieties of wood known are used, such as mahogany and

rosewood, which, however, in America are obtainable at cheap

rates. The cases are of the most solid construction

possible, and the legs massive, (by which especially the

firmest duration is insured) all constructed of the

above-mentioned material, which is quickly and accurately

cut into the requisite form by a machine.... By means of

these and other improvements, but particularly by means of

the material, are the American pianos not only far more

durable than the imported, but also infinitely less subject

to loss of tone.

"The American pianos are invariably of a table form, in

order to adapt them to small rooms. Their tone is sweet and

rich, and has been pronounced clear, full and pleasing, by

the best European performers. The pianos of Stottart

(Stoddard) and Nunns, in New-York, of Laud and Mayer, in

Philadelphia, and especially of Chickering, in Boston, enjoy

a high reputation. This latter enterprising individual

spares no expense to secure the best improvements, and apply

them to his instruments. Other excellent manufactories also

abound, among which are many German proprietors, who,

however, all follow the American style of construction.

"Previous to the year 1847, about sixty-four patents for

improvements in pianos were taken out.... The average price

of a splendid 'Chickering,' of 7-1/2 octaves, is from $350

to $400. I have purchased of Stoddard in New-York an

excellent and handsome instrument for $250; since which time

(A. D. 1848) the price for the same has sunk fifty dollars.

Instruments of a lighter construction may be bought for one

hundred and fifty dollars; nor will it be long ere the best

pianos may be had for a price ranging from $180 to $200.

There are in America men whose exclusive business it is to

tune pianos, for which they generally receive one dollar....

"While on the subject of music, I may be permitted to speak

of an outcast class of minstrels, namely, the harp girls;

who, after having wandered through Germany, or even England,

or having been turned out of the same, find their way to the

United States. Especially in New Orleans are they at home,

and there sing, in the coffee-houses and bar-rooms, most

blackguard (_zotenhaften lieder_) songs, in the English

language, learned either _at home or in England_--partly to

the delight and partly to the disgust of the mixed companies

there assembled. Germany can in truth take but little pride

in such representatives of her nationality. She is already

too little appreciated in America to render it necessary

that such females should still further degrade her--females,

for whom the American (who invariably holds in high respect

the sex) entertains an unconquerable disgust. Apropos of

those, I may mention the so-called 'broom girls,' who sell a

sort of little brooms or fly-brushes, singing therewith

fearful songs; and finally, the innumerable organ and

tambourine players, who frequently have with them a child

which dances like an ape to the sound of their horrible

music."

From the practical and common-sense-like manner in which the subject

is treated, the following chapter on boarding-schools will probably

prove interesting to every American reader:

"Would not any one imagine that a nation like the German,

which is universally recognized as the best educated and

most erudite, which has written and effected so much for the

cause of education, would naturally be the one to supply the

world with accomplished teachers? Is there in the civilized

world another nation where so many men have made it the

entire business of a life, passed in the most zealous and

deeply grounded studies of all languages, living and dead,

or who have so fully succeeded in teaching even foreigners

their own language? Certainly not. 'Whence comes it then,'

any one may reasonably inquire, 'that these learned men, who

appear to be, in every respect, so peculiarly adapted to

teach, have not long since conducted the education of the

whole world? Or why is it, that in North America at least,

where a widely spread German element throws open so vast a

field to their exertions, they have not the direction of

every private school?'

"Incomprehensible as this may appear at a first glance, it

is still explicable in a few words. The American seeks, for

the education of his children, _practical men, who are not

only adapted to and skilled in their vocation, but also

familiar with the world--its progress and requirements_--men

not only capable of teaching their pupils the rules of

grammar and syntax, but who are also qualified to impart the

peculiarities and precepts of life in the world at

large--men of prepossessing manner and appearance, and whose

habits are adapted to the requirements of refined society.

This it is, in a few words, that the American requires. And

now, I ask--how many old and young teachers are there in

Germany thus qualified?

"I here speak, of course, in a general way; for I well know

that there are in Germany many teachers and learned men, who

could more than fulfil all of these requirements of the

American parent, but their number is unfortunately limited;

and I deem it important that I speak freely and fully on

this subject, since many a learned German, whose

acquirements and scientific knowledge would insure him an

independent and respectable station at home, nevertheless

frequently finds himself compelled by the pressure of

circumstances to seek America, in the hope of there opening

a school, or at least finding employment as teacher, and

there too frequently, in addition to the bitterest

disappointment, discovers too late that he is fit for no

other practical employment which will yield him his daily

bread.

"As a proof, however, that most of these so called

pedagogues must in America be necessarily deceived in their

expectations, I take the liberty of adding yet a few words.

"The American requires before all, as far as the moral

qualifications of the teacher are concerned, a firm

religious tendency--a requirement for which the scion of

'Young Germany,' fresh from his university career, has but

little taste; since his recollections of that life are yet

too fresh upon him to admit of a willing submission to such

rules,--and I advise any one who proposes to follow such a

course to become a farmer's man, rather than a hypocrite or

sham-saint....

"If we proceed in our examination of private schools in

America, we find that the majority are for the education of

girls. Upon which the question arises--Are German ladies

generally adapted to the superintendence of such

establishments?--a question which I must either answer with

No, or modify with the admission that if there be any

schools managed by German ladies, I am ignorant of their

existence. The cause for the negative being essentially the

same as with the male scholars.

"No man can better appreciate the worth of German women than

myself. I acknowledge perfectly their virtues and

excellencies--their domestic sphere is their world,

inhabited by their children and ruled by their husbands,

whose faithful, true-hearted, modest, obedient companions

they are. To be independent and free is not in their nature;

they are not so adapted either by origin or manner of life;

nor does their education embrace any thing cosmopolitan.

Born and brought up in a province, or court city, they have

never cast a glance beyond its limits or boundaries, or

those of the nearest town, and all that lies beyond is to

them unknown and uninteresting. Thus they generally lead,

according to ancient custom, (_nach altem brauch_) an

almost vegetable life; and nothing save the dictates of

fashion can ever disturb in the slightest degree the

equanimity of their quiet souls. They do not in the least

interest themselves in the progress of industry, literature,

science, or politics, even in Germany--much less for that of

foreign countries; but are content with learning in which

section of the place they inhabit this or that necessary

article may be best or most cheaply purchased; what late

foreign romance is current in the circulating library; and

what are the latest changes in bonnets, caps, chemisettes,

or dresses, in the kingdom of fashion--whose sovereign they

all obey. In politics they rest under the perpetual

conviction that all goes on in the old way, and pass their

leisure hours in coteries and parties, where knittings

exclude all _spirituelle_ entertainment. In the lower grades

of the middle class, they grow up with an unchangeable

feeling of social inferiority, and shudder at every free

glance into life, as if guilty of unheard of arrogance and

presumption.

"And how is it possible that a woman who has grown up in

such social relations should, despite the fullest possession

of all imaginable virtues and acquirements, be capable of

teaching high-minded and independent girls? The American

maiden regards most household employments as work requiring

but little intelligence, and for which even negroes are as

well qualified. She believes that she can better occupy the

time necessary to the acquisition of subordinate

acquirements, and prefers reading, music, and art, to

knitting stockings, and similar soul-killing business. She

recognizes, moreover, no distinction in rank, but strives to

acquire as many accomplishments and as refined manners as

any other person. In short, she strives to become _a lady_,

and regards it as no extraordinary assumption, particularly

when education or natural advantages adapt her thereto, to

consider herself quite as good as any other woman in the

republic. Nor does she forget that the time will come when,

as mother, the first development of her child's mind will

become a duty, and she remembers also that he will be a

republican whose sphere of action is without limit, if his

ability correspond only to the effort. Moreover, the

American maidens are materially very _wide awake_, (_sehr

auf gewecht_,) particularly in the large cities, where they

enjoy excellent opportunities for instruction, and are

proportionally highly educated.

"The American woman or girl highly esteems the _elegant_ and

_noble_, striving ever to form herself after this pattern,

on which account French female teachers are universally

preferred, even when very imperfectly qualified. The

revolutions in France have driven forth many well educated

persons to America, who have been compelled to seek by

teaching a livelihood. Louis Philippe himself was once among

the number. In addition to the fact that no nation surpasses

the French in personal accomplishments, they have for

Americans the further recommendation that their nation has

played an important part in modern history. The American is

impressed in favor of France, because she aided him in

freeing his country from the yoke of England; and this

inclination manifests itself continually in language.

"And when the American boy glances over his school-books, he

sees France represented in pictures as the _polite_ nation,

and reads in history that she aided his country in the war

of freedom, and that Lafayette was the _friend_ of

Washington; while the same work represents the German as a

merely agricultural race, portrayed in the caricature of an

Altenburger peasant and his wife, in their fantastic

national dress. From the same book he also learns that a

German prince sold his subjects for so many pounds per head

to aid England to subdue his country. Such contrasts cannot

but awake in the child's mind deeply-rooted prejudices, far

from favorable to the German race.

"And since there has been for years an emigration to America

of Germans who were very generally poor and

uneducated--people speaking a revolting dialect, employed in

the lowest offices, and not unfrequently much resembling the

pictures in the geographies, the prejudice formed in early

youth has been thus strengthened, that the Germans are a

rough, uncultivated race, industrious and domestic, it is

true, but yet very little improved by civilization--of all

which the native Pennsylvania Germans afford unfortunately

striking examples. The well-educated American, of course,

knows better how to appreciate the true value of the

Germans; he is aware of the value of their contributions to

literature, science, art, and music; only in politics, and

in the practical application of knowledge, he places (and

not without justice) but little confidence in them.

"But the personal appearance and bearing of many Germans,

who are in themselves truly worthy of respect, often induce

the well-educated and refined American to place in the back

ground their otherwise estimable qualities. There is often

something rough and harsh about the German, and his domestic

habits are not invariably in unison with his erudition and

excellent education, but frequently destroy the good

impression which the latter might produce; moreover, their

'_geselliges Leben_,' (social jovial life) as Germans term

it, with its accompaniments of pipe and mug, are in the

highest degree revolting to an American. And further, it is

taken ill of the German that he considers that regard for

the sex, entertained by the American, as carried somewhat

too far, and allows himself to form on this point a too

hasty, and not seldom unfavorable judgment, without seeking

to examine more accurately this domestic characteristic.

Many Germans find it impossible to enter into the spirit of

American life, customs, and manners, while on religious

subjects it appears impossible for either to adopt the same

views: so that there is apparently almost no point in common

between them."

After stating that many educated Germans might succeed as teachers in

this country, could they dispense with national peculiarities, and a

description of the manner of establishing schools, in which he pays a

high compliment to the general appearance of such institutions in our

country, he adds:

"The superintendent of such an establishment must entirely

renounce all visits to bar-rooms and coffee-houses. He must

learn to impart to his system of instruction the elements of

novelty and attractiveness, and especially learn to make

friends of the children. It is utterly impossible in this

country to manage a school by the mere force of power and

authority, and the teacher attempting this, soon experiences

a revolution by which indeed he is not exactly _driven

forth_, but left _alone_ on his _cathedra_."

With this extract we close, regretting that we have been obliged to

leave untranslated many more practical and not less interesting items.

We consider the entire work as the best possible answer which can be

given to the question, '_Why has America done so little for England's

fair?_' No one who contemplates in it the immense range of our

manufactories--our incredible combinations of excellence and

cheapness, and the almost superhuman rapidity of our progress in every

branch of industrial and social life, will entertain for an instant

the slightest regret that we have not done more to increase the

profits of John Bull's raree-show.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Muffins?--_International._

[2] _Pariser-tracht_--French dress--is the epithet usually applied in

Germany to our ordinary style of costume, in contradistinction to the

_Bauern-tracht_, or peasant's costume, which is so frequently seen among

German immigrants.

[3] _Zu hause_--at house, at home. In this sentence the reader finds a

striking exemplification of the saying, that neither in French nor German

is there a word for _home_.

IN THE HAREM.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY R. H. STODDARD.

The scent of burning sandal-wood

Perfumes the air in vain;

A sweeter odor fills my sense,

A fiercer fire my brain!

O press your burning lips to mine!--

For mine will never part,

Until my heart has rifled all

The sweetness of your heart!

The lutes are playing on the lawn,

The moon is shining bright,

But we like stars are melting now

In clouds of soft delight!

TO THE CICADA.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY H. J. CRATE.

Cicada sits upon a sprig,

And makes his song resound;

For he is happy when a twig

Lifts him above the ground.

And so am I, when lifted up

On hopes delusive wing;

I laugh, and quaff the flowing cup,

I love, I write, I sing!

Should clouds or cares obscure our sky,

And all be gloom around,

My merry little friend and I

Soon tumble to the ground.

TRICKS ON TRAVELLERS AT WATERLOO.

M. Leon Gozlan, one of the most esteemed magazinists in France, has

lately paid a flying visit to the scene of his country's most glorious

disasters, Waterloo, and has given a characteristic account of what he

saw and heard there. We quote a part of it, in which he describes a

knavish practice of which great numbers are every year made victims.

M. Gozlan has just passed through the Brussels _faubourg_ Louisa, and

is oppressed with most melancholy reflections, when his coachman

addresses him--

"Sir," exclaimed my conductor, suddenly interrupting my

meditations, "excuse me if I am troublesome, but before

arriving at Mont-Saint-Jean I wish to warn you of a knavish

trade you have probably never heard of at Paris."

"A knavish trade unknown at Paris?" I replied,

incredulously; "that is rather surprising. But come, tell me

what is this new species of industry."

"You can easily suppose," pursued my loquacious coachman,

"that after the battle of Waterloo there remained on the

field a large quantity of cannon-balls, buttons, small brass

eagles, and broken weapons. Well, for the last thirty-four

years, the country people have been carrying on a famous

business in these articles."

"It seems to me, however, my friend," I observed, "that a

sale continued for so long a period, must have left very

little to be disposed of at present."

"True, sir; and this is precisely what I would guard you

against. Those who obtain a subsistence by such means,

purchase the goods new at a manufactory, in shares, and then

bury in different parts of the field, and for a wide space

around, pieces of imperial brass eagles, thousands of metal

buttons, and heaps of iron balls. This crop is allowed to

rest in the earth until summer, for few strangers visit

Waterloo in winter; and when the fine weather arrives, they

dig up their relics, to which a sojourn of eight months in a

damp soil gives an appearance of age, deceiving the keenest

observer, and awakening the admiration of pilgrims."

"But this is a shameful deceit."

"True again, sir; but the country is very poor about here;

and after all, perhaps," added the philosophic driver, "no

great harm is done. This year the harvest of brass eagles

has been very fair."

We entered the forest of Soignies by a narrow and naturally

covered alley, the two sides crowned with the most luxuriant

foliage. Poplars, elms, and plane-trees appeared to be

striving which should attain the highest elevation. One

peculiarity I could not avoid remarking in the midst of this

solemn and beautiful abode of nature, and that was the

perfect stillness prevailing around. The air itself seemed

without palpitation, and during a ride of nearly two hours

through this sylvan gallery, not even the note of a bird

broke on the solitude. A forest without feathered songsters

appeared unnatural, and the only possible reason that could

be imagined for such a circumstance might be, that since the

formidable day of Waterloo, they had quitted these shades,

never to return, frightened away by the roar of the cannon

and the dismal noise of war. What melancholy is impressed

upon the beautiful forest of Soignies! I cannot overcome the

idea, that since Providence destined it should become the

mute spectator of the great event in its vicinity, it has

retained the mysterious memory in the folding of its leaves

and the depths of its shades. Destiny designs the theatre

for grand actions. An army of one hundred thousand men

perished there. Such was the irrevocable decree.

"Do you think," I inquired of the coachman, wishing to

change the current of my thoughts, "there are persons so

unscrupulous as to speculate on the curiosity of tourists to

Waterloo in the manner you have described?"

"Ah, sir," he replied, "I have not told you half the tricks

they practice on the credulous. It would indeed fatigue you

if I mentioned all of them, but if you will permit me, I

will relate an instance I witnessed myself one day. I was

conducting from Waterloo to Brussels a French artist and a

Prussian tourist. The Prussian supported on his knee some

object very carefully enveloped in a handkerchief, and which

he seemed to value greatly. When we had arrived about midway

on the road, he inquired of the Frenchman whether he had

brought away with him any souvenir of his pilgrimage to

Waterloo.

"'In good faith no,' replied the other; and yet I was on the

point of making a certain acquisition, but the exorbitant

price demanded prevented me: one hundred francs, besides the

trouble of carrying off such an article.'

"'What could it have been?' demanded the Prussian,

curiously.

"'You must not feel offended if I tell you,' returned the

artist; 'it was the skull of a Prussian colonel, a

magnificent one! And what rendered it more valuable, it was

pierced by three holes, made by the balls of Waterloo. One

was in the forehead, the others were through the temples. I

should have had no objection to secure this, if I could have

afforded it, and have had a lamp made of the skull of a

Prussian officer killed by the French. And you, sir?' he

continued, looking at the packet carried by his

fellow-traveller, 'pray what luck have you had?'

"'I,' replied the Prussian, with an uneasy movement, and

looking greatly confused, 'I am astonished at the wonderful

resemblance of what has happened to both of us, for I

purchased this morning the skull of a French colonel killed

by a Prussian at Waterloo.'

"'You, sir?'

"'Y--e--s,' stammered the Prussian, 'and I thought of having

it made into a cup to drink the health of Blucher at each

anniversary of our victory.'

"'And is the skull pierced by three bullets?' demanded the

Frenchman, his suspicions becoming awakened.

"With a look of consternation the Prussian hastily unrolled

the handkerchief, and examined the contents. The skull bore

the same marks indicated by his travelling companion! It was

the identical relic that was French when offered to an

Englishman or Prussian, and had become Prussian or English

when offered to a Frenchman.

"This, sir," added Jehu, smacking his whip, "you will admit,

is worse than selling false brass buttons and the Emperor's

eagles."

STUDIES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE,

BY PHILARETE CHASLES.

We have frequently been interested by the clever contributions of M.

PHILARETE CHASLES to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. They are chiefly on

English and American literature, and among them are specimens of acute

and genial criticism. M. Chasles has just published in Paris a

collection of these papers, and we translate for _The International_ a

reviewal of it which appears in a late number of the French journal,

the _Illustration_. Says the writer, M. Hipolyte Babou:

Books are becoming scarce. To be sure, volume upon volume is published

every day, but a book that is a book is a _rara avis_, and if any one

should inquire whose fault it is, we reply that it is the fault of the

press, constantly requiring the first-fruits of a writer's

meditations. The journalist has displaced the author. The fugitive

page rules the great world of literature. Wit, talent, genius,

science, have not time to consolidate their thoughts, before they are

disseminated. They are like the folds of the birchen bark, thrown off

as soon as formed, to give place to new ones. And these in their turn

fall, and are scattered. But, when we wish it, we can collect our

literary leaves. How many handsome volumes are made up of weekly and

monthly pages! The binder runs his needle through a collection, and

the book is made.

What kind of book? Ah, truly, it is not the venerable work of past

days, which took ten years to print and bring to perfection,

establishing at once a literary fame. It is simply a series of

articles written by steam, printed by steam, and some bright morning

bound up under a common title. But what is the story and the

attraction of such works? Bless you! there is no story. The attraction

is in the style (when there is any) and in the variety of subjects,

which generally produces a variety of impressions.

For an ordinary reader, to whom continued attention produces headache,

there is nothing more agreeable than those album-pages, or fragments

of mosaic. Thinking and serious minds turn rather towards works of

consecutive reflection, or whose details contribute to the beauty of

some whole. Variety is the wind to the weather-cock; and unity is the

inflexible pivot which every weather-cock requires to keep it from

being blown away. Thoughtful minds prefer unity above every thing. And

yet they are only heavier weather-cocks, which turn round with a

grating.

Nervous and discursive reader! logical and phlegmatic reader! here is

a book which will suit you both. M. Philarete Chasles has just

published expressly for you his _Studies upon the Literature and

Manners of the Anglo-Americans in the Nineteenth Century_. It is a

work by compartments, any of them interesting to the superficial

reader, and forming at the same time a perfect whole.

Under the influence of a spirit of order, which professors by their

vocation are very apt to possess in an eminent degree, the author has

composed his work, not of articles written for journals, but by

detailing articles a work whose plan he had before considered. The

general design, to which he is obedient, is clearly developed, page by

page, in his curious studies upon the Anglo-Americans.

It is a vile term--that of Anglo-American--a pedantic term--and rather

surprising from the pen of Chasles. For, professor as he is, he

despises pedantry as the plague. There is nothing doctoral in his

literary costume; and if he has any pretension, it resembles in no

particular the grave assumptions of the cathedrants of the university.

It would be a mortification to him to belong to the school of the

Sorbonne. He is a member of the free family of the College of France,

where individual genius has triumphed more than once over the sterile

routine of tradition.

Before filling the chair of professor, the author of _Etudes_ had

written much in journals and reviews. He writes still, and is always

welcome to the public. For, it may be remarked without malice, he has

always had a larger audience of readers than of listeners. And that it

is so is rather complimentary than otherwise. How is it, indeed, that

the intellectual humorist succeeds better as an author than as a

teacher? What does he need to insure, if he wishes it, the

enthusiastic admiration of the young public whom he instructs? Has he

not at command those vivid flashings of the imagination which, by an

electric sympathy, might bring down about him thunders of applause? Is

he fearful that his gesture and his voice would not become his

thought? Does he disdain to have recourse, hap-hazard, to the little

artifices of eloquence? It is very easy to gain popularity by a

juggle, when it cannot be done by the force of true oratory. Be

enthusiastic of your merits. Mingle with the swellings of poetry a

certain dogmatism of opinion--call to your aid assurance, impudence,

and all the insipidities of the _style printanier_--fire, as it were,

pistol-shots into the audience, and continue the fire by a brilliant

musketry of little fulminating phrases--the victory is yours, unless

you are essentially an ass. For youth--verdant youth--will always be

carried away by the expression, true or false, of feeling.

M. Philarete Chasles is said to want in some degree that great

constituent of humanity--passion. He is one of those refined and

delicate writers who employ all their genius to ridicule the mind, and

all their reason to drive to shipwreck upon the beautiful waters of

poesie the most charming flotillas of the imagination. He belongs to

the breed of sharp raillers, whose skepticism points an epigram. In a

word, there is no reverse side for his admiration on any question--a

habit of judging quite common among many writers, genuine and

charlatan.

But this is not saying that the author of _Etudes_ does not feel

deeply the irresistible attraction of the beau ideal; or that we are

treating of one of those representatives of pompous and stupid

criticism, who are so justly despised by the poets. Certainly not. On

the contrary, M. Chasles combines a vigorous hate of ornate folly and

vulgarity with a profound disgust towards tame or extravagant

conventionalism. The academic style has no fascination for him. He

likes elbow-room in the discussion of art, and if he finds himself

confined by the close-fitting coat of the professor, he rips it

asunder, stretching out his arms in a fit of restlessness. A

protective literature regards him among its most resolute adversaries.

No custom-houses in literature for him, and particularly no excisemen,

who, under pretext of contraband, drive their brutal gauge-rods into

the free productions of human intelligence.

M. Philarete Chasles is a literary disciple of Cobden. He would not

only lower the barriers between province and province, but wholly

abolish them between nation and nation. His imagination carries him as

a balloon beyond the tops of custom-houses; and after visiting the

shores of England and America, he returns to France with some curious

samples of foreign literature. By this come-and-go policy of

importation and exportation, he has created, or at least developed, a

noble spirit of commerce, which may be termed international criticism.

This commerce is particularly useful for us who are always ready to

proclaim ourselves in every thing and to every one the first nation of

the globe. It is an auspicious time therefore to become acquainted

with the weaknesses of our character without losing its force. The

glory of the past obliges us to think of the glory of the future,

which can be easily lost to us if ambition does not come in time to

animate our courage. To deny that there are rivals is no way to

conquer them. It is a great deal better to study them attentively, and

to consider beforehand the perils of the combat. We are indeed the

heroes of genius, but if we misapprehend the tactics, we say it

frankly, we shall be beaten.

The author of the _Etudes_ wishes to spare us such a humiliation, by

telling us of the enemy as he is; and in this sense his work is truly

patriotic, and cannot be unacceptable to any.

Many writers have instituted a relation between us and the Latins and

Greeks. M. Chasles thinks that to remember the glorious dead of the

south is to engender contempt for the living. It is not then towards

the south that he directs his attention. The Saxon race, beyond the

British Sea and the Atlantic, preoccupies him. The nations in

progress are those most hopeful for new and immortal productions of

the muse. The rest of the world is given to an incurable imitation.

And M. Chasles is right in bringing us into the presence of the

English and the Americans. He is sufficiently conversant with their

language to fulfil the delicate functions of interpreter.

I know writers who, on account of studying foreign literature, so bear

the imprints of it in their works, that one would say in reading them,

that he had before him French translations of Italian or German, or

English, or Spanish. The literary temperament of M. Chasles, however,

is not changed, notwithstanding his migrations. The author of _Etudes_

thinks in French, writes in French, and what is more, in French

inherited from a Gaul. He preserves in his mind the brightness of his

native sky, whether he wanders in the fogs of London, or is becoming a

victim of ennui among the vapors of New-York. His pen seems to strike

out sparks as he writes. He is active and bold, strong and light,

independent and courteous. Nothing stops him. He runs oftener than he

walks, and leaps over an obstacle that he may not lose time in going

round it. Indeed, every thing is accomplished well by the intelligence

that judges as it travels. Reflection itself is rapid, and logic

hastens the step and smooths the way. A light and tripping foot

belongs especially to criticism. If it raises a little brilliant dust

in the road, it is no matter, it soon falls again. M. Chasles has no

taste for old truths; he prefers much some kind of paradox which is

now a truth and now a lie. It is for this reason that foreigners

reproach him with being superficial. Very well! let him be so. He is a

true Frenchman, for he touches only the flower of ideas, and, for a

Frenchman, the flower and the surface are all one.

It is not just, however, to regard this reproach as wholly merited,

although (originating beyond the British Sea) it is reproduced among

us by those would-be grave men who are dull writers. M. Chasles often

allies lightness of expression with great profundity of thought. His

style cuts as a blade of steel. He has eloquence, gayety, irony,

caprice, and all in a perfect measure. No style resembles less the

childish dashes of persons of wit, and who possess nothing else--who

play the mountebank by a hundred tricks to astonish the gaping

crowd--a light style, if you please, but empty as it is light.

The _Etudes_ of M. Chasles are not of that superficial character

adopted by many. The admiration of ninnies is not his desire. The

object that he pursues continues ever a serious one, although a

thousand graces ornament the way. He has vivacity without losing

precision--two characteristics of good writing seldom found together.

If he indulges in digressions, they are not perceptible until the

reappearance of his subject shows us how gracefully he has departed

from it. He passes rapidly over what is known, while with an especial

care he dwells on what is unknown. Thus, in the history of American

literature he does not amuse himself long with the popular names of

Fenimore Cooper and Franklin. What could he say new respecting these

two great ornaments of American science and literature? His instinct

of observation and criticism suggested to him the works less known of

Gouverneur Morris and Hermann Melville. Between these two writers, of

whom one was the contemporary of Washington, and the other still

living in some corner of Massachusetts, are ranged according to their

date the productions of the writers of the great American nation.

Gouverneur Morris was of a noble spirit. His _Memoires_ represent to

us, with a full and attractive fidelity, the opinion which the young

and tranquil republic of the United States entertained at the close of

the eighteenth century, of the men and the events of our French

Revolution. He was far from misunderstanding the abuses of our ancient

society, but he deplored that it was necessary for violence to abolish

them. A sensible and polished observer, he criticised them without

passion, and with a benevolent irony. Let us hear him tell of a

conversation he had, at Madame de la Suze's, with one of the most

brilliant leaders of the gay world that had just perished. In a few

lines, he presents an admirable sketch of the personage:

'The rest of our party were playing at cards, and quite

absorbed in the game, when M. de Boufflers, in want of

something better to do, spoke to me of America. The

carelessness with which he heard me proved that he did not

pay the least attention to what he had asked me.

--"But how could you defend your country from invasion

without fleets and armies?"

"Nothing could be more difficult," replied Morris, "than to

subjugate a nation composed of kings, and who, if looked

upon contemptuously, would respond: '_I am a man; are you

any thing more?_'"

"Very well," said M. de Boufflers. "But how would you like

it, if I should say to one of those citizen-kings: Monsieur,

the king, make me a pair of boots!"

"My compatriot," said Morris, "would not hesitate to reply:

'With great pleasure, sir. It is my duty and my vocation to

make boots, and I could wish that every one would do his

duty in this world."'

M. de Boufflers looked up to the ceiling as if in search of a solution

of this enigma, and Morris contemplated him, as much surprised as if,

in the forests of the New World, he had heard a humming-bird reason of

the affairs of the Republic. And it was thus with all that class of

men--the same elegance--the same luxury--the same prattle--the same

heedlessness. All these courtiers of the last hour resembled precisely

M. de Boufflers. The same day, indeed, of the taking of the Bastile,

Morris traced two lines upon the tablettes:

"It is very well that the court should appear to believe

that all is tranquil; but to-morrow, perhaps, when the

citadelle is in flames, they will agree that there has been

some noise in Paris."

Some time before, the grave and gentle American had met Madame de

Stael at Madame de Tesse's; the daughter of Necker conversed with him

in another style than that of M. de Boufflers. However, quite serious

as Corinne certainly was, the dignity of the compatriot of Washington

surprised and diverted her.

"Monsieur," she said, after a moment's conversation, "you

have a very imposing air."

"I know it, Madame," replied Morris.

The English literature constantly serves M. Chasles, to bring into

relief the character of American literature. And thus, he opposes the

peaceful inspirations of the work-girls of Lowell with the passionate

dithyrambics of Ebenezer Elliott, the blacksmith of Sheffield--a

chapter full of just remarks upon what Chasles calls the poetry of

vengeance.

The girls of Lowell--the Lucindas, the Alleghanias, the Tancredas, the

Velledas--who, after a day's labor, pass into the street in silken

dresses, with gold watches shining at their zone, and their beautiful

faces shaded by parasols--those Massachusetts weavers, who have even

instituted an academy among themselves--do not in their innocent

verses, invoke the vengeful muses. They know nothing of that terrible

Nemesis, with cheeks hollow and ghastly, armed hands, and eyes red

with poverty and weeping, to whom the poor workers of British

factories send up the cry of famine and despair. If the female

operatives of Lowell read the work of M. Philarete Chasles, they will

find there an encouragement to cultivate the smiling thoughts of

poetry. He, no more than George Sand, notwithstanding her sympathies

for the working classes, either loves or encourages the irritable

singers of social sufferings.

"What," he exclaims, "has become of the glorious Apollo of

the Greek? Where is the sunny ideal of the hellenistic

heavens? Where the sacred sorrows of Christian perfection?

Poetry is no more a garden of roses; it is a wild field of

thorns, wherein he who walks leaves tracks of blood. At the

entrance of this Parnassus stands Poverty, whom Virgil

places _in faucibus orci_. Her complaints are in the midst

of curses. She holds in her hand a skull, with strings of

iron, and she sweeps them as a lyre with golden chords.

Behind her are Crabbe, the Juvenal of the hospitals;

Ebenezer Elliott, the singer of hunger; Cooper, the poet of

suicide, and the author of _Ernest_, followed by a miserable

train of children, whom manufacturers have famished, and

young women whom excessive labor has demoralized and

prostituted in the morning of their life. Mournful choir, to

which these poets worthily respond."

It is not very pleasant, to be sure, for a reader to pass from some

agreeable representation to a frightful array of evils. The spectacle

but too true of social infirmities troubles the sleep of the happy,

and awakes with a start the drowsy hate of the unhappy. But there is

no reason why he who suffers, should not utter his complaint. The

Bible itself is not a stranger to vehement protestations against the

apparent injustice of destiny. When Job arose from the ashes, surely

it was not to sing to the passers-by some touching idylle in the style

of Ruth and Naomi. He accused heaven and life, he cursed his friends,

and his mother, without troubling himself to know whether his sorrows

reached the lovers' palm-groves, or disturbed the wooings of the

daughters of Idumea. The Sheffield blacksmith, among flaming furnaces,

cannot sing the voluptuous sweets of existence. He strikes the anvil

with a ring, and exclaims in a rough voice, amid smoke and fire:

"Accursed be the muse of necessity and suffering! Who wishes

her acquaintance? The poor, so despised! Write not their

frightful history. Pride and vanity despise your labors. Who

is he, I pray you, that artizan who uses the pen? What right

has he to do so? Absurd rhymer, let him retire and pare his

nails--and renounce a species of industry for which he was

never made. You are accustomed only to oaths, and you are

only a rough worker in poetry."

M. Chasles does not deny the right of artizans to employ the pen.

Ignoble or noble--a serf or a lord--whether he is called Burns, or

Chasles of Orleans--whether he is a porter, a laborer, or even a

drunkard, from the moment that there is seen upon his brow the radiant

sign of genius, he is known. To wonder that an artizan is a poet, is

to think it marvellous that beauty should bloom upon the cheek of a

village maid. The gift is natural, and not acquired; and the mechanic

who writes either prose or poetry must be judged with as much severity

as if he were a king. It is not astonishing, therefore, that the

author of the _Etudes_ judges severely the blacksmith of Sheffield.

But the latter seems to have anticipated the severity of the critic,

when he says with an accent of the most mournful bitterness:

"Do not read me, ye who love elegance and grace. Alight not,

ye butterflies, among thorns--nor upon rocks burning in the

sun and beaten by the rains--you may tarnish the gauze of

your beautiful wings. But you who honor truth, follow me. I

will bring you wild flowers, gathered from the precipice,

amid howling tempests."

While we inhale the perfume of the _flowers of the heath_, we can

honor truth, without being _foolish flies_, and without renouncing the

love of the _elegant and graceful_. Not less did M. Chasles write to

the _Journal des Debats_, a little before the revolution, in those

generous words which we are happy to see again in his book:

"It is for you, politicians, to find a remedy for the evils

of society. The interests of the masses are in your

hands--those who have not enough to eat, and too much work.

The verses of famished workmen, which we cannot sing, we

weep over. The muse of Cooper, of Elliott, and of Crabbe,

is not a muse, but a fury. You are reminded, that in

accumulating wealth in one direction, you are increasing

poverty in another; and that the poverty which complains at

first avenges itself afterward."

I do not know whether these words were prophetic, but I see in them a

noble sentiment, unfortunately too rare among those who love elegance

and grace. Let us be elegant, if we can; gracious, if we know how.

But, besides those desirable qualities of the old French society, let

us show in the light of heaven that living active charity which only

can strengthen by purifying the existence of the new order of society.

The grandchildren of Boufflers, we expose ourselves no more to

ridicule in saying: "Monsieur le roi, faite-moi une paire de

souliers." The king will make the shoes if it is his vocation. The

grandchildren of Boufflers should do their duty--that is to say:

contribute with all their mind to find out, according to the

expression of Chasles, efficacious remedies for social evils. When

workmen are more happy, they will write less poetry, or at least they

will write more calmly. See the American spinners of Lowell. Ah!

Lucinda or Tancreda has never lifted up her voice to heaven with the

despair of Elliott. An amorous complaint suffices her; a sonnet, or a

love-sigh, breathed by the light of the stars, consoles her for the

labors of the day. American society works first; when it has conquered

an independence, it sings. All Americans do not accept the saying of

one of their journalists: "Political and practical life is sufficient

for man. Imagination is a peril--arts a misfortune." So far from

proscribing the arts and imagination, Cooper, Irving, Audubon, and

many others are among those who have magnified the literature of their

country. But the greater part, with that fruitful wisdom which

characterizes them, applaud the advice of Channing:

"I made a resolution of presenting a gift to my country in

the form of an epic. But I had prudence enough to postpone

it until I should have a fortune. I then commenced to make

my business known, after which I retired into solitude with

my imagination."

In Europe it is just the contrary. We ask the imagination to make our

business known, and we retire into solitude with our fortune or our

poverty. Which course avails the more for our glory? Which for our

repose?

The conclusion of the work of M. Chasles is, that our literature, our

manners, our nationality even, will some day disappear before the

rising glory of the great Western Republic, but I can declare without

emotion that I have no fear of my country. America offers us examples;

we also have some to offer her. The future of the United States is

developed day by day in a manner that astonishes Europe. But

notwithstanding the _patriotes de clocher_, and French _humanitaires_

who suppress the very word native country, I believe in the higher

destinies of France.

A PHANTASY.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY R. H. STODDARD.

"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean."

The light of the summer noon

Bursts in a flood through the blind;

But few are the rays of joy

That shine in my darkened mind.

My heart is stirred to a storm,

And its passions intense and proud

Feed on themselves, like fires

Pent in a thunder-cloud!

I think of the days of youth,

And the fountains of love defiled,

Till I hide my face in my hands,

And weep like a little child!

THE TIMES OF CHARLEMAGNE.

Sir Francis Palgrave's _History of Normandy and of England_, of which

the first volume has just appeared in London, is unquestionably a very

important work, illustrating a period of which comparatively little

has been known, and of which a knowledge is eminently necessary to the

student of British institutions and manners. The subject has been

partially handled by French authors--by Thierry, Guizot, Michelet, and

in a desultory manner by M. Barante--but not one of these has shown

the very intimate relation that exists between the history of Normandy

and of England. That intermixture of the histories of the countries

may indeed be inferred from old English works, such as Camden,

Fortescue, Hale, Britton, Bracton, Fleta, Spelman, Somner, Chief Baron

Gilbert, Daines Barrington, and others, and from labors of Bede,

William of Malmesbury, Geoffry of Monmouth, and all the older

chroniclers. But not one of these writers, in all their varied labors,

has undertaken to show how the histories of the two countries act and

re-act on each other, or how, represented in the popular mind by the

epithets Norman and Saxon, French and English, they have been for a

thousand years or more running against each other a perpetual race of

rivalry and emulation. A worthy Picard lawyer indeed, of the name of

Gaillard, who abandoned the law for literature about a century ago,

wrote a work called _The Rivalry between France and England_, in

eleven volumes; but who, in 1851, unless specially dedicated to

historical studies, would read a French history on the subject of the

rivalry between the two nations, written between 1771 and 1777,

especially when it extends to eleven volumes? Independently of this,

any French history on such subject is sure to be tinged with

prejudice, passion, and vanity. It is true that the judicious Sharon

Turner, in his _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, Henry Wheaton, in his

_History of the Northmen_, and M. Capefigue, give us more or less

insight into Norman history; but none of these authors attempt to show

the general relations of mediaeval history, or that absolute need of

uniting Norman to English history, which it is the chief aim of Sir

Francis Palgrave to demonstrate. As deputy keeper of the public

records of England, this learned historian has had the best possible

opportunities of investigation, and he tells us in his preface that

he has devoted to the work a full quarter of a century.

The style of Sir Francis Palgrave is generally heavy, and his work

will therefore be more prized by students than by the mere lovers of

literature. His manner and spirit and the character of his performance

may be most satisfactorily exhibited in a few specimen paragraphs,

however, and we proceed to quote, first, from an introductory

dissertation, some remarks on the arts, architecture, and civilization

of Rome. He says:

"Roman taste gave the fashion to the garment, Roman skill

the models for the instruments of war. We have been told to

seek in the forests of Germany the origin of the feudal

system and the conception of the Gothic aisle. We shall

discover neither there. Architecture is the costume of

society, and throughout European Christendom that costume

was patterned from Rome. Unapt and unskilful pupils, she

taught the Ostrogothic workman to plan the palace of

Theodoric; the Frank, to decorate the hall of Charlemagne;

the Lombard, to vault the duomo; the Norman, to design the

cathedral. Above all, Rome imparted to our European

civilization her luxury, her grandeur, her richness, her

splendor, her exaltation of human reason, her spirit of free

inquiry, her ready mutability, her unwearied activity, her

expansive and devouring energy, her hardness of heart, her

intellectual pride, her fierceness, her insatiate cruelty,

that unrelenting cruelty which expels all other races out of

the very pale of humanity; whilst our direction of thought,

our literature, our languages, concur in uniting the

dominions, kingdoms, states, principalities, and powers,

composing our civilized commonwealth in the Old Continent

and the New, with the terrible people through whom that

civilized commonwealth wields the thunderbolts of the

dreadful monarchy, diverse from all others which preceded

amongst mankind."

The following is our author's view of the real and the ideal

Charlemagne:--

"It seems Charlemagne's fate that he should always be in

danger of shading into a mythic monarch--not a man of flesh

and blood, but a personified theory. Turpin's Carolus

Magnus, the Charlemagne of Roncesvalles; Ariosto's _Sacra

Corona_, surrounded by Palatines and Doze-Piers, are

scarcely more unlike the real rough, tough, shaggy, old

monarch, than the conventional portraitures by which his

real features have been supplanted.

"It is an insuperable source of fallacy in human observation

as well as in human judgment, that we never can sufficiently

disjoin our own individuality from our estimates of moral

nature. Admiring ourselves in others, we ascribe to those

whom we love or admire the qualities we value in ourselves.

We each see the landscape through our own stripe of the

rainbow. A favorite hero by long-established prescription,

few historical characters have been more disguised by fond

adornment than Charlemagne. Each generation or school has

endeavored to exhibit him as a normal model of excellence:

Courtly Mezeray invests the son of Pepin with the taste of

Louis Quatorze; the polished Abbe Velly bestows upon the

Frankish emperor the abstract perfection of a dramatic hero;

Boulainvilliers, the champion of the noblesse, worships the

founder of hereditary feudality; Mably discovers in the

capitulars the maxims of popular liberty; Montesquieu, the

perfect philosophy of legislation. But, generally speaking,

Charlemagne's historical aspect is derived from his

patronage of literature. This notion of his literary

character colors his political character, so that in the

assumption of the imperial authority, we are fain to

consider him as a true romanticist--such as in our own days

we have seen upon the throne--seeking to appease hungry

desires by playing with poetic fancies, to satisfy hard

nature with pleasant words, to give substance and body to a

dream.

"All these prestiges will vanish if we render to Charlemagne

his well deserved encomium:--he was a great warrior, a great

statesman, fitted for his own age. It is a very ambiguous

praise to say that a man is in advance of his age; if so, he

is out of his place; he lives in a foreign country. Equally

so, if he lives in the past. No innovator so bold, so

reckless, and so crude, as he who makes the attempt (which

never succeeds) to effect a resurrection of antiquity."

The practical character of Charlemagne is thus sketched:--

"We may put by the book, and study Charlemagne's

achievements on the borders of the Rhine; better than in the

book may the traveller see Charlemagne's genuine character

pictured upon the lovely unfolding landscape: the huge

domminsters, the fortresses of religion; the yellow sunny

rocks studded with the vine; the mulberry and the peach,

ripening in the ruddy orchards; the succulent potherbs and

worts which stock the Bauer's garden,--these are the

monuments and memorials of Charlemagne's mind. The first

health pledged when the flask is opened at Johannisberg

should be the monarchs name who gave the song-inspiring

vintage. Charlemagne's superiority and ability consisted

chiefly in seeking and seizing the immediate advantages,

whatever they might be which he could confer upon others or

obtain for himself. He was a man of forethought, ready

contrivance, and useful talent. He would employ every

expedient, grasp every opportunity, and provide for each day

as it was passing by.

"The educational movement resulting from Charlemagne's

genius was practical. Two main objects had he therein upon

his conscience and his mind. The first, was the support of

the Christian Faith; his seven liberal sciences circled

round theology, the centre of the intellectual system. No

argument was needed as to the obligation of uniting sacred

and secular learning, because the idea of disuniting them

never was entertained. His other object in patronizing

learning and instruction was the benefit of the State. He

sought to train good men of business; judges well qualified,

ready penmen in his chancery; and this sage desire expanded

into a wide instructional field. Charlemagne's exertions for

promoting the study of the Greek language--his Greek

professorships at Osnaburgh or Saltzburgh--have been

praised, doubted, discussed, as something very paradoxical;

whereas, his motives were plain, and his machinery simple.

Greek was, to all intents and purposes, the current language

of an opulent and powerful nation, required for the

transaction of public affairs. A close parallel,

necessitated by the same causes, exists in the capital of

Charlemagne's successors. The Oriental Academy at Vienna is

constituted to afford a supply of individuals qualified for

the diplomatic intercourse, arising out of the vicinity and

relations of the Austrian and Ottoman dominions, without any

reference to the promotion of philology. We find the same at

home. If the Persian language be taught at Haileybury, it is

to fit the future Writer of his Indian office. He may study

Ferduzi or Hafiz, if he pleases, but the cultivation of

literature is not the intent with which the learning is

bestowed."

Here is the manner in which Sir Francis Palgrave contrasts and

compares the two emperors, Charlemagne and Napoleon:--

"Napoleon sought the creation of an anti-christian imperial

pontificate--the caliphate of positive civilization; his

aspiration was the establishment of absolute dominion,

corporeal and intellectual; mastery over body and soul;

faith respected only as an influential and venerable

delusion; the aiding powers of religion accepted until she

should be chilled out, and the unfed flame expire, and

positive philosophy complete her task of emancipating the

matured intellect from the remaining swathing bands which

had been needful during the infancy of human society. And

the theories of Charlemagne and Napoleon, though

irreconcileably antagonistic, in their conception, would,

were either fully developed, become identical in their

result, notwithstanding their contrarieties. They start in

opposite directions, but, circling round their courses,

would--were it permitted that they should persevere

continuously and consistently--meet at the same point of

convergence, and attain the same end.

"Moreover, the territorial empires of Napoleon and

Charlemagne had their organically fatal characteristics in

common. Each founder attempted to accomplish political

impossibilities--to conjoin communities unsusceptible of

amalgamation; to harmonize the discordant elements which

could only be kept together by external force, whilst their

internal forces sprung them asunder--a unity without

internal union. But even as the wonderful agencies revealed

to modern chemistry effect, in a short hour, the progresses

which nature silently elaborates during a long growth of

time, so in like manner did the energies of civilization

effect in three years that dissolution for which, in the

analogous precedent, seven generations were required."

THE DECORATIVE ARTS IN AMERICA.

The growth of the fine arts, commonly so called, in this country, has

been a fruitful subject of congratulatory observation in the last

dozen years. The opera in that time has gained a permanent home here,

and our sculptors and painters have gone out into the old fields of

art, and claimed equality with their masters--an equality which Italy,

Germany, France, and even England, slowly and reluctantly in some

cases, but in the presence of the works of Powers, Crawford,

Greenough, Leutze, and others, have, at length, confessed. In

painting, as everybody knows, with few exceptions our best works have

never been seen abroad, and the advance of design here is therefore to

be studied only in our own exhibitions, hung with the productions of

Durand, Huntington, Eliott, and the crowd of young painters coming

forward every season to claim the approval of the people. The general

taste keeps pace with every achievement. We hear that the Art-Union

was never visited so much as this year; and private galleries, and

those of every dealer in works of art, are thronged. The existence in

our principal cities, under the control of men of cultivation, of

stores for the sale of works in the fine arts, is a fact eminently

significant. That of Williams & Stevens, in Broadway, for example,

could be sustained only by a community in which there is a refinement

of taste such as a few years ago could be found only in limited

circles in this country. Beginning with efforts to introduce the

finest forms and combinations in looking-glass and picture frames, the

proprietors of this establishment have made it a great market-house

for artists, and the display upon its walls and in its windows is

frequently more attractive to the connoisseur than the exhibitions of

the Academies or the Art-Unions. And it is astonishing how many of the

best works of the European engravers--works which may justly be called

copies of the master-pieces of contemporary foreign art--are sold

here, to adorn houses from which the tawdry ornaments in vogue a few

years ago have been discarded. The same observations may be made in

regard to furniture. The graceful styles and high finish to be seen at

many of our stores, and in our recently furnished houses, illustrate a

progress in elegance, luxury, and taste, not dreamed of by the last

generation. And in all these things it is observable that the advance

is in cheapness as well as in beauty. In this respect indeed we have

scarcely kept pace with the French and English, but the cost at which

a man of taste and a little tact can now furnish a house, so that it

shall illustrate not only his own refinement but the condition of the

best civilization of the time, is astonishingly small, compared with

what it was a few years ago. The fine engraving, with its appropriate

frame, to be bought for thirty dollars, is to be much preferred before

the portrait or indeed before any painting whatever that is

purchasable for a hundred dollars; and though silver is unquestionably

silver, the imitation table furniture, of the most classical shapes,

that is sold now for a fifth of the cost of the coinable metal, looks

quite as well upon a salver. The arts by which beauty is made familiar

in the homes of all classes of people are of all arts most deserving

of encouragement, and it is among the happiest of omens that they are

receiving so much attention--far more attention now than they have

ever before received in America. We shall hereafter attempt a more

particular exhibition of this subject.

A VISIT TO THE LATE DR. JOHN LINGARD.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY REV. J. C. RICHMOND.

Noticing in the journals some brief but very just remarks upon the

character of the eminent Roman Catholic historian of England, who died

July 17th, at the good old age of more than four-score years, I am

induced to think that an account of a visit which I had the honor to

make this celebrated scholar, may not be altogether without interest

for your readers.

March 12, 1850, having a leisure day at Lancaster, and having already

visited John of Gaunt's castle, in company with several of those

genial spirits who afford me an unusually delightful social

remembrance of the dingy buildings and narrow crooked streets of that

famous old town, one of them happened to mention the name of Dr.

Lingard. I instantly inquired after him with interest, and, observing

my enthusiasm, Mr. T. J---- proposed a drive to his residence at

Hornby, a village some twelve or thirteen miles distant. I of course

gladly acceded to the proposal, and we were soon on our way, with a

fleet horse, over the absolutely perfect English turnpike road--for

the roads in England are always passable, and not "_improved_," like

some of those around New-York, in so continued a manner as to be

useless.

After a fine rural drive, crossing the river Loon, and through

Lonsdale, we came within sight of an old church and castle. I took the

church to be that of the historian, but found, to my surprise, that

the famous old sage was placed in entire seclusion, and ministered to

a very few, and those very poor, sheep, in a little chapel, or room,

under his own roof. In this remote and by no means picturesque

village, at an antiquated house, we knocked, and were told by the aged

domestic that the venerable historian had been very feeble of late,

and had gone out, on this fine day in the spring, for a walk. After

many inquiries among the villagers, by whom he was as well known as

beloved, I proposed to take the line of the new railway, and, after

quite a walk, met a feeble old man, with a scholar's face, a bright

twinkling black eye, supporting his steps on a staff, and wrapped up

with all the care which an aged and faithful housekeeper could bestow

upon a long-tried and most indulgent master. I pronounced his name,

and gave him my own; stated that I was a presbyter in the holy (though

not Roman) Catholic church, that I had long admired his integrity and

faithfulness as an historian, and that it was by no means the least of

my happy days in England that I was now permitted to speak to him face

to face. The kind and gentle old man seemed truly astonished that any

one who had come so far, and seen so much, should care for seeing

_him_, and rewarded my enthusiasm with a hearty grasp of the hand that

had wielded so admired a pen. We then walked on together towards his

house, and you will not blame me for saying, that I was proud to offer

the support of my arm to this fine octogenarian, who had not suffered

the spirit of the priest to becloud the candor of the historian. We

conversed with the greatest freedom upon our points of difference, and

he repeated to me, personally, _his entire disbelief in the fable of

the nag's head ordination_. He seemed to be only _historically_ aware

of a disruption between us, for the benevolence of his heart would

acknowledge no actual difference.

I cannot refrain from quoting a somewhat amusing illustration of his

infinite and childlike simplicity of character, combined with an utter

ignorance of those rudiments of modern science which would be much

more familiar to our district school-boys than to many men educated in

those classic homes of ancient learning, the English universities.

Some posts had been set in the ground, and were bound together, for

strength, by iron wires; and the venerable sage said, "I suppose this

is the Electric Telegraph." I was obliged to insist with a kind of

explanatory and playful pertinacity, that this supposition must be

incorrect, because electricity could not be conducted, unless the

wires were at least continued _through_ the thick posts, instead of

being wound _around_ them. At his house, we found the study not very

well supplied with books, for the aged scholar had now almost ceased

to peruse these. At my request he wrote out very slowly, but in a

wonderfully distinct hand for eighty, his own name and the date, "John

Lingard, Hornby, March 12, 1850;" and voluntarily added a Latin

punning inscription, which he had made the evening before, which he

humorously proposed to have engraved upon the new Menai bridge. In

this he had spoken of the _builder of the bridge_, the celebrated

Stephens, as _Pontifex Maximus_. I need not say that I shall preserve

these papers among the most precious of my English mementos. I was

sorry I could have no hopes that the branch which he gave me from the

tree that he had transplanted with his own hands from the battle-field

of Cannae to the quiet of his garden at Hornby, would ever flourish in

America. After many hospitable invitations, which other engagements

obliged us to decline, and many modest expressions of the gratitude

which he seemed deeply to feel for the pains that I had taken to come

so far to visit him, we bade farewell to the candid priest, who began,

as he told me, an essay to defend his Church against the aspersions of

Hume, and had ended by producing a voluminous as well as luminous

history.

[For another part of this magazine we have compiled a more full and

accurate account of the life of the deceased scholar than has hitherto

appeared in this country. See _Recent Deaths_, _post_, 285-6.]

PRIVATE LIFE OF JOHN C. CALHOUN.

ADDRESSED TO HER BROTHER, AND COMMUNICATED TO THE INTERNATIONAL

MAGAZINE,

BY MISS M. BATES.

The funeral rites of the lamented Calhoun have been performed. So

deeply has the mournful pageant impressed me, so vividly have memories

of the past been recalled, that I am incapable of thinking or writing

on any other theme. My heart prompts me to garner up my recollections

of this illustrious statesman. I can better preserve these invaluable

memories by committing them to paper, and as you enjoyed but one brief

interview with Mr. Calhoun, these pages shall be addressed to you.

An eloquent member of the House of Representatives, from your state,

has compared this southern luminary to that remarkable constellation

the Southern Cross. A few years since, in sailing to a West Indian

island, I had a perilous voyage, but have ever felt that the sight of

that Southern Cross, which had long haunted my imagination, almost

repaid me for its excitement and suffering. And thus do I regard an

acquaintance with this intellectual star as one great compensation for

a separation from my early home. It would have been a loss not to have

seen that poetic group, which greets the traveller as he sails

southward, but how much greater the loss, never to have beheld that

unique luminary which has set to rise no more upon our visible

horizon.

Mr. Calhoun's public character is so well known to you that I shall

speak of him principally in his private relations, and shall refer to

his opinions only as expressed in conversation--for it was in the

repose of his happy home, in the tranquillity of domestic life, and in

the freedom of social intercourse, that I knew him.

While the clarion-notes of his fame resound among the distant hills

and valleys of our land, while those who in political strife crossed

lances with this champion of the south nobly acknowledge his valor and

his honor, while Carolina chants a requiem for her departed dead, may

not one who knows his moral elevation, and who has witnessed his

domestic virtues, have the consolation of adding an unaffected tribute

to his memory? While his devoted constituents, with impressive symbols

and mournful pageants, perform funereal rites, erect for him the

costly marble, weave for him the brilliant chaplet, be it mine to

scatter over his honored tomb simple but ever green leaflets. While in

glowing colors the orator portrays him on his peerless career in the

political arena, be it mine to delineate the daily beauty of his life.

In Mr. Calhoun were united the simple habits of the Spartan lawgiver,

the inflexible principles of the Roman senator, the courteous bearing

and indulgent kindness of the American host, husband, and father. This

was indeed a rare union. Life with him was solemn and earnest, and yet

all about him was cheerful. I never heard him utter a jest; there was

an unvarying dignity and gravity in his manner; and yet the playful

child regarded him fearlessly and lovingly. Few men indulge their

families in as free, confidential, and familiar intercourse as did

this great statesman. Indeed, to those who had an opportunity of

observing him in his own house, it was evident that his cheerful and

happy home had attractions for him superior to those which any other

place could offer. Here was a retreat from the cares, the observation,

and the homage of the world. In few homes could the transient visitor

feel more at ease than did the guest at Fort Hill. Those who knew Mr.

Calhoun only by his senatorial speeches may suppose that his heart and

mind were all engrossed in the nation's councils, but there were

moments when his courtesy, his minute kindnesses, made you forget the

statesman. The choicest fruits were selected for his guest; and I

remember seeing him at his daughter's wedding take the ornaments from

a cake and send them to a little child. Many such graceful attentions,

offered in an unostentatious manner to all about him, illustrated the

kindness and noble simplicity of his nature. His family could not but

exult in his intellectual greatness, his rare endowments, and his

lofty career, yet they seemed to lose sight of all these in their love

for him. I had once the pleasure of travelling with his eldest son,

who related to me many interesting facts and traits of his life. He

said he had never heard him speak impatiently to any member of his

family. He mentioned that as he was leaving that morning for his home

in Alabama, a younger brother said, "Come soon again, and see us,

brother A----, for do you not see that father is growing old, and is

not father the dearest, best old man in the world!"

Like Cincinnatus, he enjoyed rural life and occupation. It was his

habit, when at home, to go over his grounds every day. I remember his

returning one morning from a walk about his plantation, delighted with

the fine specimens of corn and rice which he brought in for us to

admire. That morning--the trifling incident shows his consideration

and kindness of feeling, as well as his tact and power of

adaptation--seeing an article of needlework in the hands of sister

A----, who was then a stranger there, he examined it, spoke of the

beauty of the coloring, the variety of the shade, and by thus showing

an interest in her, at once made her at ease in his presence.

His eldest daughter always accompanied him to Washington, and in the

absence of his wife, who was often detained by family cares at Fort

Hill, this daughter was his solace amid arduous duties, and his

confidant in perplexing cases. Like the gifted De Stael, she loved her

father with enthusiastic devotion. Richly endowed by nature, improved

by constant companionship with the great man, her mind was in harmony

with his, and he took pleasure in counselling with her. She said, "Of

course, I do not understand as he does, for I am comparatively a

stranger to the world, yet he likes my unsophisticated opinion, and I

frankly tell him my views on any subject about which he inquires of

me."

Between himself and his younger daughter there was a peculiar and most

tender union. As by the state of her health she was deprived of many

enjoyments, her indulgent parents endeavored to compensate for every

loss by their affection and devotion. As reading was her favorite

occupation, she was allowed to go to the letter-bag when it came from

the office, and select the papers she preferred. On one occasion, she

had taken two papers, containing news of importance, which her father

was anxious to see, but he would allow no one to disturb her until she

had finished their perusal.

In his social as well as in his domestic relations he was

irreproachable. No shadow rested on his pure fame, no blot on his

escutcheon. In his business transactions he was punctual and

scrupulously exact. He was honorable as well as honest. Young men who

were reared in his vicinity, with their eyes ever on him, say that in

all respects, in small as well as in great things, his conduct was so

exemplary that he might well be esteemed a model.

His profound love for his own family, his cordial interest in his

friends, his kindness and justice in every transaction, were not small

virtues in such a personage.

He was anti-Byronic. I never heard him ridicule or satirize a human

being. Indeed, he might have been thought deficient in a sense of the

ludicrous, had he not by the unvarying propriety of his own conduct

proved his exquisite perception of its opposites. When he differed in

opinion from those with whom he conversed, he seemed to endeavor by a

respectful manner, to compensate for the disagreement. He employed

reason rather than contradiction, and so earnestly would he urge an

opinion and so fully present an argument, that his opponent could not

avoid feeling complimented rather than mortified. He paid a tribute to

the understandings of others by the force of his own reasoning, and by

his readiness to admit every argument which he could, although

advanced in opposition to one he himself had just expressed.

On one occasion I declined taking a glass of wine at his table. He

kindly said, "I think you carry that a little too far. It is well to

give up every thing intoxicating, but not these light wines." I

replied that wine was renounced by many, for the sake of consistency,

and for the benefit of those who could not afford wine. He

acknowledged the correctness of the principle, adding, "I do not know

how temperance societies can take any other ground," and then defined

his views of temperance, entered on a course of interesting argument,

and stated facts and statistics. Of course, were all men like Mr.

Calhoun temperance societies would be superfluous. Perhaps he could

not be aware of the temptations which assail many men--he was so

purely intellectual, so free from self-indulgence. Materiality with

him was held subject to his higher nature. He did not even indulge

himself in a cigar. Few spent as little time and exhausted as little

energy in mere amusements. Domestic and social enjoyments were his

pleasures--kind and benevolent acts were his recreations.

He always seemed willing to converse on any subject which was

interesting to those about him. Returning one evening from Fort Hill,

I remarked to a friend, "I have never been more convinced of Mr.

Calhoun's genius than to-day, while he talked to us of a flower." His

versatile conversation evinced his universal knowledge, his quick

perception, and his faculty of adaptation. A shower one day compelled

him to take shelter in the shed of a blacksmith, who was charmed by

his familiar conversation and the knowledge he exhibited of the

mechanic arts. A naval officer was once asked, after a visit to Fort

Hill, how he liked Mr. Calhoun. "Not at all," says he--"I never like a

man who knows more about my profession than I do myself." A clergyman

wished to converse with him on subjects of a religious nature, and

after the interview remarked that he was astonished to find him better

informed than himself on those very points wherein he had expected to

give him information. I have understood that Mr. Calhoun avoided an

expression of opinion with regard to different sects and creeds, or

what is called religious controversy; and once, when urged to give his

views in relation to a disputed point, he replied, "That is a subject

to which I have never given my attention."

Mr. Calhoun was unostentatious and ever averse to display. He did not

appear to talk for the sake of exhibition, but from the overflowing of

his earnest nature. Whether in the Senate or in conversation with a

single listener, his language was choice, his style fervid, his manner

impressive. Never can I forget his gentle earnestness when endeavoring

to explain his views on some controverted subject, and observing that

my mind could hardly keep pace with his rapid reasoning, he would

occasionally pause and say, in his kind manner, "Do you see?"

He did not seek to know the opinion of others with regard to himself.

Anonymous letters he never read, and his daughters and nieces often

snatched from the flames letters of adulation as well as censure which

he had not read. Although he respected the opinions of his

fellow-men, he did not seek office or worldly honor. A few years

since, one to whom he ever spoke freely, remarked to him that some

believed that he was making efforts to obtain the presidency. At that

moment he had taken off his glasses, and was wiping them, and thus he

replied: "M----, I think when a man is too old to see clearly through

his glasses, he is too old to think of the presidency." And recently

he said to her, "They may impute what motives they please to me, but I

do not seek office." So much did he respect his country, that he might

have been gratified by the free gift of the people; so much did he

love his country, that he might have rejoiced at an opportunity to

serve it, but would he have swerved one iota from his convictions to

secure a kingdom? Who that knew him believes it?

It has been said by that brilliant satirist Horace Walpole, that every

man has his price. I never did believe so evil a thing; I have been

too conversant with the great and good to believe this libel; and I

doubt not there are others beside Mr. Calhoun who value truth and

honor above all price or office.

Highly as our great statesman regarded appreciation, yet he could

endure to be misrepresented. While his glorious eye would light with

more brilliant lustre at the greeting of friendship or the earnest

expression of confidence, he rose superior to abuse or censure. I

believe it was ever thus while in health. The last winter, dying in

the Senate chamber, his feeble frame could ill repel the piercing

shafts of his antagonists. The ebbing currents in his pulses were

accelerated. He could not desert his post, though the contest raged

fiercely, but his great soul was wounded. He loved his country, he

loved the Union, and it was a great grief to him in his last hours to

be misunderstood and misrepresented. Still, he was consoled by the

thought that in the end he would be appreciated. Some one remarked to

him that he was a very unpopular man. He replied, "I am, among

politicians, but not among the people, and you will know this when I

am dead."

Though Mr. Calhoun acknowledged, in his own winning way, the

involuntary tributes of friendship and admiration, he courteously

declined, whenever he could with propriety, public testimonies of

homage which were offered to him. His wife shared with him this

unostentatious spirit, preferring the voice of friendship to the

acclamations of the multitude. I have heard some of his family say

that they coveted nothing, not even the presidency, for him. They,

with many of us who knew him, felt that even the first gift of a great

nation could not add one gem to his crown--that crown of genius and

virtue, whose glorious beauty no mortal power could illumine with new

effulgence.

His sincerity was perfect. What he thought he said. He was no

diplomatist. Some of his theories might seem paradoxical, but a

paradox is not necessarily a contradiction. He has been accused of

inconsistency. Those who thus accuse him do him grievous wrong.

Nothing is more inconsistent than to persist in a uniform belief when

changing circumstances demand its modification. How absurd to preserve

a law which in the progress of society has become null and obsolete!

for instance, granting to a criminal "the benefit of clergy."

"Nothing," says a distinguished English writer, "is so revolutionary

as to attempt to keep all things fixed, when, by the very laws of

nature, all things are perpetually changing. Nothing is more arrogant

than for a fallible being to refuse to open his mind to conviction."

When Mr. Calhoun altered his opinion, consistency itself required the

change.

However some of his political sentiments might have differed from

those of many of the great and good of the age, he was sincere in

them, and believed what he asserted with all the earnestness of an

enthusiastic nature, with all the faith of a close and independent

thinker, and with all the confidence of one who draws his conclusions

from general principles and not from individual facts. Time will test

the truth of his convictions. It has been said that he was sectional

in his feelings, but surely his heart was large enough to embrace the

whole country. It has often been said that he wished to sever the

Union, but he loved the Union, nor could he brook the thought of

disunion if by any means unity could be preserved. Because he foresaw

and frankly said that certain effects must result from certain causes,

does this prove that he desired these effects? In his very last speech

he speaks of disunion as a "great disaster." But he was not a man to

cry "peace, peace, when there was no peace." Although like Cassandra

he might not be believed, he would raise his warning voice; he was not

a man to hide himself when a hydra had sprung up which threatened to

devastate our fair and fertile land from its northern borders to its

southern shores. And while he called on the south for union, did he

not warn the conservative party at the north that this monster was not

to be tampered with? And did he not call on them to unite, and arise

in their strength, and destroy it?

And how could he, with his wise philosophy, his knowledge of human

nature, and universal benevolence, view with indifference that

unreflecting and wild (or should I not say _savage_) philanthropy,

which in order to sustain abstract principles loses sight of the

happiness and welfare of every class of human beings? How often did he

entreat that discussion on those subjects, beyond the right of

legislation, should be prevented, that angry words and ungenerous

recrimination should cease! Did he not foresee that such discussions

would serve to develop every element of evil in all the sections of

the country--a country with such capacities for good? Did he unwisely

fear that the ancient fable of Cadmus would be realized--that

dragon-teeth, recklessly scattered, would spring up armed? And did he

not know that the southern heart could not remain insensible to

reproach and aggression?

"Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni:

Nec tam aversus equos Tyria Sol jungit, ab urbe."

And, ah, how earnestly did he plead for peace, and truth, and justice!

As far as I understood him, he wished to benefit by his policy in

affairs both the south and the north. I remember, in speaking to me of

free trade, he expressed the opinion that the course he recommended

would benefit the north as well as the south. This he did not merely

assert, but sustained with frequent argument. In his conversation

there was a remarkable blending of fact and theory, of a knowledge of

the past and an insight into the future.

Mr. Calhoun was a philanthropist in the most liberal sense of the

word. He desired for man the utmost happiness, the greatest good, and

the highest elevation. If he differed from lovers of the race in other

parts of the world, with regard to the means of obtaining these

results, it was not because he failed to study the subject; not

because he lacked opportunities of observation and of obtaining facts;

nor because he indulged in selfish prejudices. From every quarter he

gleaned accessible information, and with conscientious earnestness he

brought his wonderful powers of generalization to bear on the subject

of human happiness and advancement--his pure unselfish heart aiding

his powerful mind.

The good of the least of God's creatures was not beneath his regard;

but he did not believe that the least was equal to the greatest; he

did not think the happiness or elevation of any class could be secured

by a sentiment so unphilosophical. The attempt to reduce all to a

level, to put all minds in uniform, to give all the same employment,

he viewed as chimerical. He said that in every civilized society there

must be division of labor, and he believed the slaves at the south

more happy, more free from suffering and crime, than any corresponding

class in any country. He had no aristocratic pride, but he desired for

himself and others the highest possible elevation. He respected the

artisan, the mechanic, and agriculturist, and considered each of these

occupations as affording scope for native talent. He believed the

African to be most happy and useful under the guidance of an

Anglo-Saxon; he is averse to hard labor and responsible effort; he

likes personal service, and identifies himself with those he serves.

Mr. Calhoun spoke of the great inconsistency of English denunciations

of American slavery, and said that to every man, woman, and child in

England, two hundred and fifty persons were tributary. Although

colonial possessions and individual possessions are by many regarded

as different, he considered them involved in the same general

principle. In considering the rights of man the great question is not,

Has a master a right to hold a slave? but, Has one human being a right

to hold another subordinate? The rights of man may be invaded, and the

idol Liberty cast down, by those who are loudest in their

philanthropic denunciations respecting slavery. Is there as much

cruelty in holding slaves, even under the most unfavorable

circumstances, as in selling into bondage a whole nation?[4] Let the

brave chiefs of the Rohillas answer from the battle-field. Let cries

reply from the burning cities of Rohilcund. Let the princesses of Oude

speak from their prisons.

Close observation, prompted by a kindly heart, had brought Mr. Calhoun

to the opinion that the Africans in this country were happier in

existing circumstances than they would be in any other; that they were

improving in their condition, and that any attempt to change it, at

least at present, would not only be an evil to the country but fraught

with suffering to them. A state of freedom, so called, would be to

them a state of care and disaster. To abolish slavery now would be to

abolish the slave. The race would share the doom of the Indians.

Although here nominally slaves, as a general thing they enjoy more

freedom than any where else; for is not that freedom, where one is

happiest and best, and where there is a correspondence between the

situation and the desires, the condition and the capacities? May we

not say with the angel Abdiel:

"Unjustly thou depravest it with the name

Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains,

Or Nature. God and Nature bid the same,

When he who rules is worthiest, and excels

Them whom he governs. This is servitude,

To serve the unwise."

Mr. Calhoun found the local attachment of the slaves so strong, their

relation to their owners so satisfying to their natures, and the

southern climate so congenial to them, that he did not believe any

change of place or state would benefit them.

These, as nearly as I can recollect, were his opinions on the subject

of slavery, and were expressed to me in several conversations.

Sentiments similar to these are entertained by many high-minded and

benevolent slave-holders. That this institution, like every other, is

liable to abuse, is admitted, but every planter must answer, not for

the institution--for which he is no more accountable than for the fall

of Adam--but for his individual discharge of duty. If, through his

selfishness, or indolence, or false indulgence, or severity, his

servants suffer, then to his Master in heaven he must give account.

But those who obey the divine mandate, "Give unto your servants that

which is just and equal," need not fear. In the endeavor to perform

their duty in the responsible sphere in which they were placed by no

act of their own, they can repose even in the midst of the wild storm

which threatens devastation to our fertile land; they can look away

from the judgment of the world, nor will they, even if all the powers

of earth bid them, adopt a policy which will ruin themselves, their

children, and the dependent race in their midst; they will not cast a

people they are bound to protect on the tender mercies of the cruel.

In their conservative measures they are, and must be, supported at the

north, by men of liberal and philosophical minds, of extended views,

and benevolent hearts. But I have said far more on this subject than I

intended, and will add only that those who do not, from personal

observation, know this institution in its best estate, cannot easily

understand the softened features it often wears, nor the high virtues

exhibited by the master, and the confiding, dependent attachment of

the servant. Often is the southern planter as a patriarch in olden

times. Those who are striving to sever his household know not what

they do.

Well may we who live in these troubled times exclaim with Madame

Roland, the martyr of the false principles of her murderers, "O

Liberte! O Liberte! que de crimes on commet en ton nom!" This she

said, turning to the statue of liberty beside the scaffold. Liberty

unrestrained degenerates into license. There may be political freedom

without social liberty. Says Lamartine, speaking of the inhabitants of

Malta, "Ils sont esclaves de la loi immuable de la force que Dieu leur

fait; nous sommes esclaves des lois variables et capricieuses que nous

nous faisons."

A few years' residence on this soil might teach even a Wilberforce to

turn in his philanthropy to other and wider fields of action.

Of Mr. Calhoun's character as a master much might be said, for all who

knew him admit that it was exemplary. But we need not multiply

examples to prove his unaffected goodness, and I will repeat only a

circumstance or two, which, by way of illustrating some subjects

discussed, he incidentally mentioned to me. One related to a free

negro, formerly a slave in Carolina, but then living in one of our

northern cities, who came to him in Washington, begging him to

intercede for his return to Carolina. He represented his condition as

deplorable, said that he could not support himself and family by his

trade, (he was a shoemaker,) and that not being able to obtain

sufficient food or fuel in that cold climate, they were almost frozen.

"When I told him," said Mr. Calhoun, "that I would do all I could for

him, he seized both my hands in his and expressed fervent gratitude."

At another time, speaking of a family whom his son designed to take to

Alabama, he told me that the mother of the family came to him and said

she would prefer to stay with her master and mistress on the

plantation, even if all her children went with master A. Mr. Calhoun

added, "I could not think of her remaining without either of her

children; and as she chose to stay, we retained her youngest son, a

boy of twelve years."

Mr. Calhoun required very little of any one, doing more for others

than he asked of them. He seemed to act upon the principle that the

strong should bear the burthens of the weak. In sickness he feared to

give trouble, and unless his friends insisted, would have little done

for him. "Energetic as he was," said a near relative, "he would lie

patiently all day, asking for nothing." His sensibility was of the

most unselfish nature. Some months before his death, and after he left

Fort Hill the last time, he said he felt that death was near, much

nearer than he was willing to have his family know, and added that he

wished to give all the time he could spare from public duty to

preparation for death. While suffering from increasing illness at

Washington, still, as he hoped to return again to his family, he was

unwilling, though they anxiously awaited his summons, that they should

be alarmed, saying he could not bear to see their grief. No doubt his

conscientious spirit felt that his country at that critical moment

demanded his best energies, and that he should be unnerved by the

presence of his nearest friends; and loving his own family as he did,

and so beloved as he was by them, he serenely awaited the approach of

the king of Terrors, and suffered his last sorrow far from his home,

cheered only by one watcher from his household.

There was a beautiful adaptation in his bearing--a just appreciation

of what was due to others, and a nice sense of propriety. I have had

opportunities to compare his manners with those of other great men.

His kind and unaffected interest was expressed in a way peculiarly

dignified and refined. Some men appear to think they atone for a low

estimate of our sex by flattery. Not so with Mr. Calhoun. He paid the

highest compliment which could be paid to woman, by recognizing in her

a soul--a soul capable of understanding and appreciating. Of his

desire for her improvement and elevation he gave substantial proofs.

Although Fort Hill was five miles from the female academy he never

suffered an examination to pass without honoring it with his presence.

He came not for the sake of form, but he exhibited an interest in the

exercises, and was heard to comment upon them afterwards in a manner

which showed that he had given them attention. He never reminded you

that his hours were more precious than yours. The question may be

asked how could he, amid his great and stern duties, find time for

attention to those things from which so many men excuse themselves on

the plea of business. But he wasted no time, and by gathering up its

fragments, he had enough and to spare. I have before said that his

kind acts were his recreations.

Were I asked wherein lay the charm which won the hearts of all who

came within his circle, I could not at once reply. It was perhaps his

perfect _abandon_, his sincerity, his confidential manner, his

childlike simplicity, in union with his majestic intelligence, and his

self-renunciation--the crowning virtue of his life: these imparted the

vivid enjoyment and the delightful repose which his friends felt in

his presence. It was often not so much what he said as his manner of

saying it, that was so impressive. Never can I forget an incident

which occurred at the time when a war with England, on account of

Oregon, seemed impending. He arrived in Charleston during the

excitement on that subject. He was asked in the drawing-room if he

thought there would be a war. He waived an answer, saying that for

some time he had been absent from home and had received no official

documents; but as he passed with us from the drawing-room to the

street door, he said to me in his rapid, earnest manner, "I anticipate

a severe seven months' campaign. I have never known our country in

such a state." War has a terror for me, and I said, "Oh, Mr. Calhoun,

do not let a war arise. Do all you can to prevent it." He replied, "I

will do all, in honor, I can do," and paused. A thousand thoughts

seemed to pass over his face, his soul was in his eyes, and bending a

little forward, as if bowed by a sense of his responsibility and

insufficiency, he added, speaking slowly and with emphasis and with

the deepest solemnity, as if questioning with himself, "_But what can

one man do?_" I see him now. No painting or sculpture could remind me

so truly of him as does my faithful memory. But I will not dwell on

the subject, for I fear I can never by words convey to the mind of

another the impression which I received of his sincerity, and of his

devotion to his country and to the cause of humanity. How he redeemed

his pledge to do all that he, in honor, could do, his efforts in the

settlement of the Oregon question truly show. When next I saw him I

told him how much I was delighted with his Oregon speech. In his

kindest manner he replied, "I am glad I can say any thing to please

you."

The last time I saw Mr. Calhoun, you, my brother, were with me. You

remember that his kind wife took us to his room, and that you remarked

the cheerfulness and affability with which he received us, although

his feeble health had obliged him to refuse almost every one that day.

We shall see him no more, but his memory will linger with us.

To you I would commend him as an example. Read his letter to a young

law-student. As you are so soon to enter the profession of law, such a

model as Mr. Calhoun may be studied with advantage. While I would

never wish any one to lose his own individuality, or to descend to

imitation, I believe that one gifted mind leaves its impress on

another; while I would not deify or canonize a mortal, I would render

homage to one who united such moral attainments to so rare a

combination of intellectual gifts; while it is degrading to ourselves

and injurious to others to lavish unmerited and extravagant praise, it

is a loss not to appreciate a character like his, for it ennobles our

own nature to contemplate the true and the beautiful.

Although it is said that our country is in danger from its ideas of

equality, and its want of reverence and esteem for age, and wisdom,

and office, and talents, and attainments, and virtues--and this

feature of the American character is so strongly impressed that Mar

Yohannah, the Nestorian bishop, said in my presence, in his peculiar

English, "Yes, I know this nation glory in its republicanism, but I am

afraid it will become republican to God"--yet it is a cheering omen

when a man like Mr. Calhoun is so beloved and reverenced. I think

every one who was favored with a personal acquaintance with him will

admit that I have not been guilty of exaggeration, and "will delight

to do him honor."

The question naturally arises, to what are we to ascribe the formation

of such a character? There must have been causes for such effects.

Whence came his temperance, his self-denial, his incorruptible

integrity, his fidelity in every duty, his love for mankind, his

indefatigable efforts for the good of others, and his superiority to

those things which the natural heart most craves? Mr. Calhoun's

childhood was spent among the glorious works of nature, and was

sheltered from the temptations which abound in promiscuous society. He

was the son of pious parents, and by them he was taught the Bible, and

from that source undoubtedly his native gifts were perfected. I have

understood that from early life he was an advocate for the doctrines

of the Bible, as understood by orthodox Christians. I have been told

by relatives of his who were on the most intimate terms with him, that

for some time before his death his mind had seemed to be much occupied

with religious subjects, and that he too often expressed confidence in

the providence of God to leave any doubt as to his trust in Him. An

eminent clergyman, now deceased, said in conversation with another,

that he had often conversed with Mr. Calhoun on the subject of

religion, and had no doubt as to his piety. I have remarked his

reverential air in church, and have known him apparently much

disturbed by any inattention in others. He never united with any

church, and it is my opinion, formed not without some reason, that he

was prevented, not by disregard to any Christian ordinances, but from

personal and conscientious scruples with respect to his

qualifications. He was a man who weighed every thing with mathematical

precision.

Although open as day on topics of general interest, he was reserved in

respect to himself. I do not recollect ever to have heard him speak

egotistically, for his mind seemed always engrossed by some great

thought, and he appears, even at the close of life, to lose all

personal solicitudes in his anxiety for his country. In one of his

last letters he says, "But I must close. This may be my last

communication to you. My end is probably near, perhaps very near.

Before I reach it, I have but one serious wish to gratify--it is to

see my country quieted under some arrangement (alas, I know not what!)

that will be satisfactory to all and safe to the south." His country's

peace, and quietness, and safety, he did not see; he perished in the

storm; and there are many who knew and loved him who cherish the hope

that he is removed to a higher sphere of action--that his noble spirit

has meekly entered into the presence of its author, and that in the

starry courts above he will receive an inheritance "incorruptible,

undefiled, and that fadeth not away."

When I saw the elaborate preparations which were made here in

Charleston for his funeral, knowing his simple tastes and habits, and

his benevolence, I was at first pained, and I thought he would not

have sanctioned so much display. I feared too that solemnity would be

lost in pageantry. But it was not so. There was nothing to jar upon

the feelings of the most sensitive. All was in perfect and mournful

harmony. Silently and reverently his sorrowing countrymen bore his

remains from the steamer where they had reposed, under a canopy

wearing its thirty stars, and when the hearse, so funereal with

mournful drapery and sable plumes, entered the grounds of the citadel,

deep silence brooded over the vast multitude; noiselessly were heads

uncovered, banners dropped--not a sound but that of the tramp of

horses was heard; statue-like was that phalanx, with every eye

uplifted, to the sacred sarcophagus. If there was too much of show, it

was redeemed by the spirit that prompted it: the symbols, significant

and expressive, as they were, faintly shadowed forth the deep and

universal grief; the mournful pageantry, the tolling bell, the muffled

drum, the closed and shrouded stores and houses, gave external signs

of wo, but more impressive and affecting was the peaceful sadness

which brooded over the metropolis while it awaited the relics of the

patriot, and the deep silence which pervaded the vast procession that

followed to the City Hall, the subdued bearing of the crowd who

resorted thither, and the solemnity expressed on every face--for these

told that the great heart of the city and commonwealth wept in hushed

and sincere sorrow over "the mighty fallen in the midst of the

battle."

One day and night the illustrious dead reposed in state in the draped

and darkened Hall. An entrance was formed by the arching palmetto,

that classic tree, under whose branches Dudon the crusader was placed,

when slain in Palestine. On that tree--"altissima palma"--his comrades

placed his trophies. With a spirit as sad as that of the crusaders

when under the verdant foliage of the palm they mourned the noble

Dudon, did those who loved our champion pass beneath that arch, dark

with funereal gloom. The sarcophagus was within a magnificent

catafalque; the canopy rested on Corinthian columns; the bier was

apparently supported by six urns, while three pearl-colored eagles

surmounted the canopy, holding in their beaks the swinging crape.

Invisible lamps cast moonlight beams over the radiated upper surface

of the canopy. Through the day numbers resorted to this hallowed spot,

and at night vigils were held where the dead reposed. When morning

came the chosen guards carried the remains of the great leader to the

church. The funeral car was not allowed to bear these sacred remains

to the tomb, but they were borne by sons of the state, with uncovered

heads. Well might those who saw all these things feel that Carolina

would never be wanting to herself. The body was placed upon the bier,

surrounded by significant offerings, pure flowers and laurel-wreaths.

A velvet pall, revealing in silver lines the arms of the state, the

palmetto, covered the sarcophagus. Above it was a coronet woven of

laurel-leaves, like that which crowned Tasso. Then, in that church,

where columns, arches, and galleries were shrouded in the drapery of

wo, the funeral rites were performed--the mighty dead was placed in

his narrow tomb.

Peerless statesman, illustrious counsellor, devoted patriot, generous

friend, indulgent husband and father, thy humble, noble heart is still

in death; thy life was yielded up at the post of duty; thou hast

perished like a sentinel on guard, a watchman in his tower. "Thou wast

slain in thy high places." Clouds gathered thick and fast about thy

country's horizon, and even thy eagle eye failed in its mournful gaze

to penetrate the gloom which hides its future from mortal eye. Thy

work is finished--peacefully rest with thine own! Thy memory is

enshrined in the hearts of those for whom thy heart ceased its

beating. Thy grave is with us--

"Yet spirit immortal, the tomb cannot bind thee,

For like thine own eagle that soared to the sun,

Thou springest from bondage, and leavest behind thee

A name which before thee few mortals have won."

In reviewing the character of Mr. Calhoun, we find a rare combination

of mental and moral qualities--a union of contrasts. He had genius

with common sense, the power of generalization with the habit of

abstraction, rapidity of thought with application and industry. His

mind was suggestive and logical, imaginative and practical. His noble

ideal was embodied in his daily life. He was at once discursive and

profound; he could soar like the eagle, or hover on unwearied wings

around a minute circle. He meekly bore his lofty endowments; his

childlike simplicity imparted a charm to his transcendent intellect;

he united dignity with humility, sincerity with courtesy, decision

with gentleness, stern inflexibility with winning urbanity, and keen

sensibility with perfect self-command. He was indulgent to others,

denying to himself; he was energetic in health, and patient in

sickness; he combined strict temperance with social habits; he was

reserved in communicating his personal feelings, but his heart was

open on subjects of general interest; he prized the regard of his

fellow-beings, but was superior to worldly pomps and flatteries; he

honored his peers, but was not swayed by their opinions. Equal to the

greatest, he did not despise the least of men. He did not neglect one

duty to perform another. In the Senate he was altogether a senator, in

private and domestic life he was as though he had never entered the

halls of the nation, and had never borne an illustrious part in the

councils of his country.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] _Vide_ Macaulay's article on Warren Hastings, in the Edinburgh Review.

STYLES OF PHILOSOPHIES.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY REV. J. R. MORELL,

Translator of Fourier "On the Passions," &c.

The history of literatures, like that of nations, has presented its

varieties as well as its curiosities, and both alike furnish similar

though not identical features.

1st. Families and clans are traceable equally in each development, and

the movements both of literatures and races have displayed a

corresponding monotony and eccentricity, convergence and divergence,

in proportion as they have progressed along the beaten track of

opinion or performed outpost duty as the corps of guides.

2d. Not only is this family likeness obvious in the general

characteristics of ethnography and authorship, but the laws of lineage

and the hereditary transmission of qualities are as strongly marked in

one case as in the other. Letters as well as races have their

hereditary sceptres and coronets; but whereas, in the latter case the

fleshly heir of the great of other days may chance to be unworthy of

his sires, the spiritual sonship of the patrician writer is

stereotyped upon each line and lineament of his nature.

3d. Nor is the connection between words and peoples confined to a law

of analogy running through them both, but they have reacted upon and

moulded each other in a manner curious to relate, and races and

letters have mutually made and unmade each other.

4th. The Indo-Germanic people have left monuments of their sinewy

energy in the psycho-physical characteristics of affiliated races and

tongues, and individual family likenesses may be readily traced

between groups of thinkers and dreamers on the banks of the Ganges, in

the Academy, and at Weimar. Again the mystical semitic world, groaning

beneath the weight of an overwrought ideal, and lacking the ballast of

science and patient thought, has ever and anon given birth to

prodigies and monsters of cabalistic or Gnostic extravagance.

5th. To follow the currents of peoples and tongues, the great

subdivisions of the Teutonic and Romance tribes and literatures, their

virtues and vices have stamped its present physical and moral

character on the face of modern Europe. The Teutonic, representing

strength and depth in word and work, has been the stronghold of

emancipation in life and thought, yet tinctured with the savageness

and chaos of unpolished and disordered nature. The Romance, fettered

by the rhythm of Latinity, has yet possessed that voluptuous wealth of

the ideal and that graceful tracery of thought and wit which have been

denied to the other. The antagonism of the Catholic and Protestant

mind is the result of this contrast, which has, moreover, been

pictured in the tertian fevers of French revolution and in the

mystical skepticism of modern Germany.

As certain races, so also certain families of writers, have in thought

transcended the bounds of the existing and actual, and thrown out from

their brain an ideal past, present, or future, beyond the horizon, and

free from the flaws of their experience. Thus, whilst the followers of

Tao-tse were in China seeking for the drug of immortality, the Greek

and Roman poets and historians were dreaming of a golden age that cast

its radiance over the past, or of that fabled Atlantis and those sweet

Islands of the Blest in the far west--dreams and fables that have been

somewhat justified by modern discovery. Again sacred voices mingled

with these aspirations, and the semitic bards and seers pronounced in

their oracles an Eden for the past and a millenium for the future of

man.

Nor were these views confined to the old world, for the followers of

Columbus found, among the cannibals of the gulf, the traditions of a

fountain of eternal youth, and later travellers were regaled with

gorgeous stories of El Dorado and his empire--traditions and stories

that seemed to point, however obscurely, to the Sitzbath and

Californian riches.

There has likewise been a class of writers broad-cast through the

nations who have sought to mend the present and make the future by

holding the mirror to contemporaneous deformity, or painting the

perspective of an earthly elysium with the rainbow tints of hope.

Negatively or positively, directly or indirectly, these men had, in

common, faith in the regeneration of humanity. Utopias are the

familiar homes of such minds, either because they have a cast in their

eyes, or because they are more clairvoyants than the vulgar herd. In

the spring-time of our race, a Plato reflected on the poetical

extravagancies of his day, and refracted the rays of golden fancy in

the enchanted land of his Republic. The Hebrew seers in like manner,

whilst they apply no measured castigations to the money-changers who

converted the temple of God into a den of thieves, love to soar in

sublimest rhapsody above the valley of dry bones and the shadow of

death cast around them, and to indulge in visions of a vernal future,

when earth should smile in the sunshine of infinite love, when the

wolf should dwell with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid,

and a little child should lead them. Affiliated members of this

extensive and venerable company of cynics and seers have ever and anon

in the current of ages lifted a frowning brow above the troubled

waters round about them, and with the same breath that swept like a

tempest over the wintry waste, their cradle and their home, have given

utterance to strains of harmony that told of summer skies to come.

Tracing the tides of the children of men in their eccentric ebbings

and floodings, a little crew of rovers may be ever seen ploughing the

world of waters, true to their principle of keeping aloof from the

gulf-stream. Europe has been the chief nursery of these rovers, whose

voices, though few and far between, have risen above the storms of

evil passions howling about them, and have echoed through the ages.

Thus a Rabelais could laugh the knell of monkery, and with his stentor

voice, rich booming from the classic world of Nature, that had slept

during the dark ages, could crack the babel of spiritual usurpation,

and restore the balance of power between the seen and the unseen. A

Cervantes in like manner could, in the fulness of time, inflict

death-wounds with a stroke of his pen on a superannuated chivalry, and

thus, by negatively giving a _coup de grace_ to the past, pave the way

for an age of prose. Later in the day a Swift appears, in the heart of

a rotten age, himself infected with the leprosy, yet he smites the

idols of his time, of Stuart progeny, Lust and Lucre, and converts his

fables into a house of correction for a nation's vices. The Tale of a

Tub contains a stream of lustral water, and Gulliver is no mean adept

at the photographic art. The Dean hath taught us how the "positive"

fictions of a madman's brain may indirectly be a school to the nations

at all times and in all seasons.

Poesy has mixed its plaintive strains in the lamentations and oracles

of insane or inspired reformers, and the aberration or illumination of

a kindred spirit breaks forth in the wizard words of a prophet or a

bard. Some favored scions of the royal priesthood and chosen

generation of whom we speak seem to mingle these various and

heterogeneous ingredients, the cynic's lash with the seer's lamp,

mathematical squares and compasses with the conjurations of the

diviner. Their proportions, both harmonious and deformed, bespeak

their consanguinity with an extensive family, whose branches are

scattered through broad lands, and are not confined to a single

variety of the human race, though the quality and quantity of their

_esprit de corps_ may be especially predicated of the Caucasian race.

There are sovereign natures that bespeak the choice blood of rival and

remote races mingling in their veins, and which may claim kinsmanship

in opposite and conflicting clans of teachers. We have Indo-Germanic

minds, whose massive substance is relieved by the arabesque of the

Semitic style of thought, and which, though stamped with the

characteristic mould of their parentage, fling aside much of its

speciality, and stand forth as magnates in the universal aristocracy

of humanity.

An example of a rich nature cast in this mould has been presented of

late years in France, in the person of Charles Fourier. Though

indelibly French, he is still more human, and though Teutonic elements

enter largely as component parts of his frame, and the Romance genius

has cast its sunshine tints over his canvas, yet has he bravely shaken

off the chains of generic and specific modes of thought and sight, and

the priestly hieroglyphs and geometry of Egypt are seen to blend with

Persian dualism and the prophetic wand of Hebrew seers in his pages.

Nay, the mantle of Mohammed might seem to have fallen on his capacious

shoulders, to judge from the strangely glorious flights of his fancy,

and the tangible solids of his elysium. Thus the nations would appear

to have converged towards and centred in this brain, and to have

dropped in their pearls or their paste, as the case might be.

Exaggerating the mathematical precision of French thought, it is yet

tempered in a manner somewhat uncommon, by the most wholesale

picture-writing on which man ever yet ventured. The flaming

double-edged critic's sword is sometimes changed in his hands, after a

manner wonderful to relate, into an Esculapian staff, which farther

suffers a frequent conversion into Mercurian caduceus and Bacchanile

Thyrsus, and at another time assumes the proportions of Midas's wand.

Never was such a many-faced Janus seen in the flesh as this man, who

exceeds Proteus and Hindoo avatars in multiplicity combined with

unity.

The bitter laugh still curls our lips, elicited by his merciless

satire, when the tears of pity come coursing down our cheeks, as he

touches with magic finger the most godlike fibres of the soul.

Luxuriance, bordering on levity, follows fast a sense of justice and

of truth, that might have put a Brutus and an Aristides to the blush.

National contrasts, harmonies, and deformities, all seem reflected in

this representative man.

Yet it would be a very partial view that represented Fourier as

nothing better than an expletive particle added to the genealogical

list of idea-mongers, or a mosaic of valuable relics in earth's

cabinet of curiosities. Though his pen inflicts wounds both broad and

deep, yet a balm is ever at hand. Not satisfied with performing

amputations for the good of the body corporate, he is a professor of

the healing art, and affects to have discovered an elixir that shall

wipe away all tears, by causing pain and sorrow to flee away. I do not

profess to judge of the merits of the case, but one feature

distinguishes Fourier from critics, reformers, and prophets, who are

gathered to their fathers. He is a _scientific_ explorer, and the

plans that he has designed for the future structure of humanity, from

the high order of architecture and mechanics which they exhibit,

discriminate him from the vulgar herd as an originator, and place him

in the category either of eminent scientific adventurers or inventors.

Daring and caution shake hands at every page, and seem exhausted by

his pen. The Archimedian lever found a resting-place in his brain, and

sundry of his thoughts seem not inapt to upheave the world.

If Laplace deserves credit as the creator of a Mechanique Celeste,

Fourier has equal claims to gratitude as the first and only propounder

of a rigidly scientific system of mental mechanics. Though Pythagoras

might smile complacently at his harmonies and sacred numbers, and

Plato clap his hands on seeing so worthy a disciple of his Republic,

yet the fiery Frenchman is but too apt to run counter to the past, and

give a slap in the face to the wisdom of the fore-world. Though hope

and faith ever brighten his pages, we could wish at times for a larger

infusion of charity, to neutralize the gall in which his pen was

dipped. Yet he nobly vindicates his claim as a reformer by the lash he

applies with no measured hand to injustice, falseness, and hypocrisy,

under whatever guise they may appear.

REMINISCENCES OF PARIS, FROM 1817 TO 1848.

On the original publication of this work, in German, at Berlin, we

gave in the _International_ some account of it; and we avail ourselves

of the notice in the _Athenaeum_ of an English translation of it which

has just appeared in London, to give some of its best passages. In the

capital of a nation which, above all others, has been wont to project

its gravest interests into the circles of fashion and gayety, the

period included between 1817 and 1848 must have been rich indeed in

matter for observation of all kinds, by the foreigner admitted to its

saloons. With Waterloo at one end of the line, and the overthrow of

Louis Philippe at the other, what a world of change lies

between!--what unexpected turns of fortune, each throwing some new

tint on the chameleon-play of social existence! We may not expect a

lady's eye to see more than its outward features. But these alone, in

such a scene and period, are themselves enough to give some permanent

historical value, as well as a present attraction to the survey, if

only taken with common feminine intelligence.

It is true that the retrospect is not actually so rich as the above

dates would imply.--Connected notices of what might be seen in

Parisian circles do not extend beyond the first seven years of the

period in question. Afterwards, there is nearly a total hiatus, except

in the two departments of music and painting--anecdotes of which are

continued almost to the close of the Orleans dynasty. Of the persons

and events which otherwise filled the scene from 1828 downwards, the

_Reminiscences_ are wholly silent, or only introduce one or two

figures by anticipation while dwelling on the period of the

Restoration. The volume ends, indeed, with a story, in which some of

the very latest exhibitions of somnambulism serve to introduce a

Spanish romance, founded, it may be, on a basis of fact, but evidently

dressed up for effect by one not well enough acquainted with the Spain

of this century to give to the composition a probable air. But here

the display in the Parisian saloon is merely an occasional overture to

the melo-drama that follows; and we learn next to nothing of the new

faces and new fashions which the writer may have seen during the

second half of the term included in her title. What is now published,

therefore, can only be taken as a fragment--destined, perhaps, to be

further completed at some future time.

The work appears anonymously; and it might be uncourteous to pry into

the condition of the writer, beyond what it has pleased herself to

reveal. This is to the effect that she came to Paris, unmarried, and

hardly out of her teens, from some part of Germany, in the second year

of the Restoration, and, at first, was chiefly conversant with the

circles of the _haute finance_. We afterwards hear of her marriage, of

journeyings and absences, and see her in contact with various circles,

but, above all, with painters and musicians; intimate also with

Henriette, the daughter of the celebrated Jewish philosopher,

Mendelssohn. She left Paris, she further says, before the explosion of

1848. More of her personal history she does not tell--and we shall not

take the liberty of guessing.

Her notes are penned without any attempt at order; and make no

pretence to dive far beneath the surface of what she saw in the world.

They contain such light, lady-like reflections as one may fancy taken

down without effort from the kaleidoscope of Paris life, in its balls,

_soirees_, and promenades; and such anecdotes of notable things and

persons as were current in ordinary company--many of which are well

known, having been already reported by others. Here and there a

graphic trait, or a remark above the level of commonplace, gives token

of more lively intelligence, but the general character of the

reminiscence is merely gossipping--just on the ordinary level of such

observations and ideas as prevail in the common talk of the saloons.

It is only when she touches on the fine arts, especially on music,

that the lady displays decidedly clever notions of her own. Gleanings

of this easy kind, from any lesser field than Paris, might hardly have

been worth preserving; here, the abundance of matter is so great, that

even the most careless hand returns from that strange harvest with

some gatherings of value.

Among these we shall dip here and there, without attempting more order

in selection than the author herself has observed in arranging her

notes. Each may be read by and for itself without any disadvantage

whatever.

In no respect, perhaps, does the Paris of to-day differ more from that

of thirty years since than in the article of domestic comfort. After

praising Madame Thuret, one of the financial _lionnes_ of the

Restoration, for her attention to neatness, the lady adds:--

In Paris generally there was a marked contrast to this; as

well as to the Parisian cleanliness of present times. In

those days, even the dwellings of people of competent means,

there was not a trace of comfort. I have a lively

recollection of what happened when one of the younger

partners of M. Thuret gave a ball soon after his marriage.

Although the youth was rich, and had married a wealthy young

lady, the young couple, according to the Parisian custom of

the time, lived with their parents; who, rich as they were,

desiring to be richer still, had let out their splendid

hotel up to the fourth story. In this fourth story the whole

family lived together. After the Parisian finery, I was not

less struck with the Parisian filth of those days; and, in

truth, I should vainly try to paint my amazement on finding

myself compelled, while ascending the staircase, which was

actually plastered with dirt, to hold up my dress as high as

possible in order to appear tolerably clean in the

ball-room.

But if modern Paris has improved in this respect, it has, on the other

hand, we are told, lost far more in the chapter of manners. The

generation born during the first Revolution still preserved some of

the older style of social bearing; but, in the present descendants, we

may now vainly seek for any of the graces that once gave to France her

European credit for politeness.

The French, after lording it over the capitals of Europe for so many

years, were impatient to the last degree of the retribution which the

allied armies brought to their own doors in 1816. Even a returning

_emigre_ could not restrain his rage on finding that--

foreigners held the fortresses, and that he had to submit

his passport for a _vise_ to Prussian, Russian, or English

authorities; and he lost all command of himself at the idea

of the prostration of the _grande gloire Francaise_.... The

same wrath at the occupation of France by foreign troops--an

occupation which lasted for hardly three years--whereas the

French had ravaged Germany for full twenty, from the siege

of Mentz to the battle of Leipsic, was then felt in Paris by

all classes. Every little theatre on the Boulevards played

some piece referring to it in all the _refrains_ urging the

foreigners to be off at once; all the print-shops were full

of caricatures of the English and Russians. The German

soldiers, by-the-by, were, without exception, called

Prussians. At that time there was less hatred expressed

towards the Russians; in the theatres even the people would

point with curiosity to Lostopchin, the author of the

conflagration at Moscow. The hatred of the Russians grew

much more decided under Nicholas. Alexander, on the

contrary, was personally popular. Strictly speaking, the

Prussians were detested; while the English, on the contrary,

served as a perpetual butt for ridicule and wit. Their

language, gestures, dress, afforded a complete series of

dramas and caricatures.

This soreness of France under a very light application of her own

Continental system, brings to mind an anecdote from the papers of the

time, which is worth preserving:--

When the Prussian army entered Paris, one of its officers

made particular interest to be quartered in a certain hotel

in the Faubourg St Germain, the residence of a widow lady of

rank. On taking possession of his billet, the Colonel at

once haughtily refused the apartments offered him; and,

after a survey of the premises, insisted on having the best

suite on the first floor, then occupied by the lady of the

house herself. She protested and entreated in vain--the

Colonel was harsh and peremptory,--the lady had to abandon

her sitting-room, boudoir, and bed-room, and content herself

with the chambers intended for the officer. From these,

however, she was as rudely dislodged on the next day, the

Colonel demanding them for his orderly, and the lady had at

last to creep into a servant's garret. This was not all. On

first taking possession of his rooms the officer had

summoned the _maitre d'hotel_, and commanded a rich dinner

of twelve covers for the entertainment of a party of his

comrades. They came--the cellar had to yield its choicest

wines; the house was filled with bacchanalian uproar. The

orgy was repeated both on the next day and on the next

following. On the morning afterwards the officer presented

himself before the lady of the house. "You are perhaps

somewhat annoyed by my proceedings in your hotel?"

"Certainly," was the reply, "I think I have cause to

complain of the manner in which the law of the strongest has

been used here, in defiance of the commonest regard due to

my sex and age. I have been roughly expelled from every

habitable room in my own house, and thrust into a garret; my

servants have been maltreated; with my plate and provisions

and the best of my cellar, you have forced them to wait on

the riotous feasting of your comrades. I have appealed to

your generosity, to your courtesy, but in vain. I protest

against such conduct. It is unworthy of a soldier." "Madam,"

replied the Prussian, "what you say is perfectly true. Such

conduct is brutal and unbecoming. I have the honor to inform

you that what you have justly complained of for the last

three days is but a faint copy of the manner in which your

son daily behaved himself in my mother's house in Berlin

_for more than six months_ after the Battle of Jena. From me

you shall have no further annoyance. I shall now retire to

an inn. The hotel is entirely at your own disposal." The

lady blushed, and was silent.

We can hardly choose amiss among the portrait sketches. Here is the

Princess of Chimay, once celebrated as the fair Spanish Cabarus--or

Madame Tallien of the "18th Brumaire." After giving up a name which

she had no legal right to bear, she married the Count Caraman before

he succeeded to a princely title. In 1818, this heroine--

was some forty years old. Her age was partly open to

positive proof, as in '94 she was known to have just reached

her twentieth year--it was partly shown by a fulness of

person, rather tending to corpulence, which betrayed the

retreat of her younger bloom; but still you would rarely

find another beauty so well preserved, or a general

appearance equally imposing. Tall, full, gorgeous, she

reminded you of the historical beauties of antiquity. Such a

figure you might imagine as an Ariadne, Dido, or Cleopatra.

With a perfect bust, arms, and shoulders; white as an

animated statue, regular features, beaming eyes, pearly

teeth, hair raven black--hearing, speech, motion, still

ravishingly perfect. Her costume, too, had a certain Grecian

character.

Among the painters, Gerard was the lady's chosen intimate. When she

first knew him, he had already been long famous and rich; but he seems

to have taken pleasure in recalling the struggles of his early career.

It was, in many respects, a strange one:--

His father was a Frenchman, who belonged to the domestic

establishment of the Cardinal de Bernis, then ambassador at

Rome. His mother, whose name was Tortoni, was the daughter

of a plain Roman citizen. In 1782, Gerard's parents, with

their three boys, of whom Francois, the eldest, was now

twelve, returned to France, where the father died in 1789. A

year afterwards the widow went back with her children to her

own country, but had to return to France once more, for the

preservation of a small income important in her narrow

circumstances. On this occasion, besides her sons, she came

back with her little brother Tortoni and his infant sister,

some years younger than her eldest son Francois. Thus there

was in the house an aunt younger than her nephew.

The family found it hard enough to live at all in Paris: and when

Francois's great talent for drawing revealed itself, the household

means were further pinched to provide him with paper and pencils.

Under all obstacles, however, his powers soon grew evident: he got at

last an introduction to David, and became his pupil:--

Gerard was created the perfect opposite, both physically and

morally, of David. David was tall, with distorted features,

rough, furious, cruel. Gerard was small, with a pleasing,

regular physiognomy, delicate, soft, generous.... He would

often tell how he was forced in those days (during the reign

of terror) to deceive his master David, in order to preserve

his own life. David, who in his zeal for reforming the world

had become one of the most active members of the Committee

of Safety, was incessantly busied in providing that bloody

tribunal with familiars. Every one belonging to him, who

desired his own preservation, was forced either to adopt

republicanism in David's sense, or to evade it by some kind

of deception. Gerard, although in perfect health, escaped

the honor designed him by feigning sickness; and went about

in public on crutches, which, however, he threw down the

instant he knew himself safe from observation. Gerard's

mother had died in 1792. Her brother, the painter's uncle,

now a grown youth, took up the queer fancy of showing the

Parisians the excellent manner in which the Romans are

skilled in making confectioner's ices. The success of the

_Cafe Tortoni_, on the _Boulevard des Italiens_, has now

been for some fifty years known to all Europe. One of the

children (Gerard) was dead, the youngest provided for

elsewhere; and thus, after his mother's death, the young

painter of two-and-twenty was left alone with his aunt,

Mlle. Tortoni, who was but two years his junior. She became

his wife. When relating the above, she would add, with

_naivete_, "At that time my nephew was in a manner forced to

marry me, unless he chose to turn me out into the street. We

were poor, but contented. Gerard's talent, as yet little

known, and destitute of suitable means for its exercise,

supported us, however, barely; and I continued to sew, darn,

cook, carry water, and cut wood for our little household, as

I had been wont to do before, when assisting his mother, my

sister. In those days there was no marrying in the church,

no priest, no banns. A few days after the death of my

sister, we appeared in our poor work-a-day clothes, before

the _maire_. He joined our hands, and then we became a

couple."

Some months were passed in this obscure poverty, until calmer times

prevailed in Paris. Isabey had somehow become aware of the young

painter's talent, and now urged him to exhibit a picture at the first

Exhibition. Gerard produced the sketch of his _Belisaire_;[5] but

declared he had no means to paint it on a grand scale. Isabey hereupon

assisted him; and, after the picture was finished and exhibited with

success, procured him a purchaser, at the price of 100 Louis d'or.

"On the receipt of this sum," Madame Gerard went on, "we

were nearly losing our wits for joy. We were ravished, like

mere children, by the glitter of the shining gold, which we

kept again and again rolling through our fingers. We, who

until now could not even afford to buy a common candlestick,

so that we had to cut a hole in our poor wooden table to

stick the rushlight in,--we now had a hundred louis!" By

degrees Gerard advanced to a high European name; but those

only who knew him personally could have any idea of his

amiable, refined nature, of his pleasant conversation, of

the various acquirements and highly intellectual

peculiarities of this eminent man, who took up with equal

clearness many of the most dissimilar sciences. You forgot

time with him, or gladly gave him up the whole night, as he

seldom made his appearance in company at his own house

before ten.

Before leaving the grim figure of the old Revolution for more modern

sketches, we must correct the lady's statement of its victims, in

which she quite exceeds the utmost latitude of feminine gossip. "_Two

millions of heads_" she assigns as the food of the devouring

guillotine--a number transcendent, even for lady rhetoric. It is some

_five hundred_ times more than the largest estimate of those even who

have done their best to aggravate the tale of its horrors. The

Convention, when grown Anti-Jacobin, and anxious, of course, to

justify its destruction of Robespierre and his fellows, it published

lists of the sufferers, could not bring the number of the guillotined

up to a full _two_ thousand. Montgaillard, who complains that the

returns were incomplete, may be taken as the author of the most

extreme calculation on this subject: he does not get beyond a total of

_four_ thousand victims, including those who perished by _fusillades_

and _noyades_. Even an anonymous lady cannot be suffered to pass with

such a terrific exaggeration unquestioned. In 1823, she was present at

an opening of the Chambers by "Louis the Desired," now grown fatter,

it seems, than was desirable for such an operation. Indeed--

he could no longer walk; on this account the session was

held in the Louvre; and the manner in which he suddenly

pushed out on his low rolling chair, from beneath a curtain,

which was quickly drawn back, as it is done on the stage,

and as rapidly closed again, had an effect at once painful

and ludicrous. Both these feelings were increased by the

shrill piping treble which came squeaking forth from this

unlucky corpulent body.... His brother, the Comte d'Artois,

afterwards Charles the Tenth, was tall and thin, and had

retained to his advanced age that habit of shuffling about

with his legs, which teachers and governors had vainly tried

to cure him of while young. He could not keep his body still

for a single instant. His protruded head, his mouth always

open, would of themselves have seemed to indicate mere

stupidity rather than cunning, had not this impression been

contradicted, partly by the vivacity of his eyes, and partly

by his too notorious habit of intriguing. This idiotic air

of poking forward the head, with the mouth always open--but

aggravated by quite lifeless and almost totally closed

eyes--was apparent in a still higher degree in his eldest

son, the Duke of Angouleme. In the face of his wife there

were still visible some traces, if not of a former beauty,

at least of something characteristic and noble. In spite of

her withered, lean figure, her gait was firm and majestic;

but the terrorists of the Revolution had heaped misery of

every kind in double and three-fold measure on this unhappy

daughter of Louis the Sixteenth, and their cannibal severity

had broken her heart for ever.... The Duchess of Berri, a

Neapolitan princess, wife of the youngest son of the Count

d'Artois, was young, but had been ill-treated by nature in

her outward appearance. She was short, thin, with hair

blonde almost to whiteness, and a kind of reddish fairness

of complexion. In her irregular features, in her eyes which

all but squinted, no kind of expression could be

detected--not even that of frivolity, which she was accused

of.... To both these ladies the rigorously-prescribed

court-dress, as worn in open day, without candlelight, was

very unbecoming. It consisted of a short white satin dress,

called _jupe_, which means a dress without a train; the

front breadth richly embroidered with gold, with a cut-out

body, and short sleeves, leaving the neck and arms

bare,--the effect of which was absolutely pitiable on the

superannuated, yellow, and withered Duchess of Angouleme.

Around the waist a golden ceinture held up a colored velvet

skirt, with an enormous train, but no body. In front, this

kind of outer dress, called _manteau de cour_, was open, and

trimmed all round with broad lace. The head was decorated,

or rather disfigured, by a thick upright plume of tall white

ostrich feathers, to which were attached behind two long

ends of blonde lace, called _barbes_, which hung down the

back. On the forehead a closely-fitting jewelled diadem was

worn, and diamond ornaments on the neck and arms, according

to the usual fashion.

From such court scarecrows let us turn to keep a last corner for a

figure of more modern and genial appearance--though this, too, was

saddening, and is now, like the rest, grown a mere shadow. The lady

saw much of the musician Chopin after 1832, and speaks of him with

warm affection, and with a fine feeling of his genius:--

He was a delicate, graceful figure, in the highest degree

attractive--the whole man a mere breath--rather a spiritual

than a bodily substance,--all harmony, like his playing. His

way of speaking, too, was like the character of his

art--soft, fluctuating, murmuring. The son of a French

father and of a Polish mother, in him the Romance and

Sclavonic dialects were combined, as it were, in one perfect

harmony. He seemed, indeed, hardly to touch the piano; you

might have fancied he would do quite as well without as with

the instrument: you thought no more of the mechanism,--but

listened to flute-like murmurs, and dreamed of hearing

AEolian harps stirred by the ethereal breathings of the wind;

and with all this--in his whole wide sphere of talents given

to him alone--always obliging, modest, unexacting! He was no

pianoforte player of the modern sort: he had fashioned his

art quite alone in his own way, and it was something

indescribable. In private rooms as well as in concerts, he

would steal quietly, unaffectedly, to the piano; was content

with any kind of seat; showed at once, by his simple dress

and natural demeanor, that he abhorred every kind of grimace

and quackery; and began, without any prelude, his

performance. How feeling it was--how full of soul!... When I

first knew him, though far from strong, he still enjoyed

good health; he was very gay, even satirical, but always

with moderation and good taste. He possessed an

inconceivable comic gift of mimicry, and in private circles

of friends he diffused the utmost cheerfulness both by his

genius and his good spirits.... Halle has now the best

tradition of his manner.

We pause, not for want of matter, but for want of room. Besides its

lively sketches, the book contains some materials of a tragic

interest--to which we may return.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] It is now, or was not long since, at Munich, in the Leuchtenburg

Gallery.

THE LAST JOSEPH IN EGYPT.

A writer in the July number of _Bentley's Miscellany_ describes some

official experiences in Egypt during the reign of Mehemet Ali, and

among various curious incidents has the following of Boghos Bey, the

prime minister of the Pacha, who then played a no inconsiderable part

on the stage of European diplomacy, more particularly as relating to

the, at that period, all-engrossing "Eastern Question."

"By birth an Armenian, in early life Boghos Bey was dragoman or

interpreter to Mr. Wherry, then English consul at Smyrna; but he gave

up that appointment, to accompany, in a similar capacity, the Turkish

army, which, during the occupation of Egypt by the French, was sent to

co-operate at Alexandria with Sir Ralph Abercrombie's British force.

At the close of the war, on the expulsion of the French, he remained

in Egypt, where he attached himself to the rising fortunes of Mehemet

Ali, with whom he successively occupied the post of interpreter,

secretary, and finally that of prime minister, when his master--from

the Albanian adventurer--became the self-elected successor of the

Pharaohs and Ptolomies.

"On one occasion, Boghos having got into disgrace, Mehemet Ali ordered

his prime minister to be placed in a sack and thrown into the Nile. It

was supposed that this cruel sentence had been duly carried into

effect. However, the British consul in Egypt at that time, managed to

get something else smuggled into the sack, whilst he smuggled old

Boghos into his own residence, where the latter long remained

concealed, until, on one occasion, the financial accounts got so

entangled, that Mehemet Ali expressed to the British consul his regret

that Boghos Bey was no longer there to unravel the complicated web of

difficulties in which he found himself entangled: whereupon old Boghos

was produced, pardoned, reinstated in his office, acquired more

influence than ever, and was, at the time referred to, the very

'Joseph' of the land."

THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA: BY THE AUTHOR OF "SAM SLICK."

Mr. Justice Haliburton obtained some notoriety and a certain degree of

popularity by his broad caricatures of common life in New England.

These books did not display very eminent ability even for the rather

low and mean field in which the author found congenial occupation, but

the old jokes transplanted into our republican soil had a seeming

freshness in the eyes of buyers of cheap books, and they were

profitable to paper-makers and printers, until the patience of the

public could tolerate no more of their monotonous vulgarity. Judge

Haliburton has since essayed a more serious vein, and being wholly

without originality, has fallen into the old track of depreciation,

sneering, and vituperation, in the expectation that any form of attack

upon the people of the United States would sell, at least in England.

The unfortunate gentleman was mistaken, as the following very kind

reviewal of his book, which we transfer to _The International_ from

_The Athenaeum_ of July 26, will show.

"THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA. _By the Author of 'Sam Slick,' &c._

This is a vulgar and violent political pamphlet, which will

fill no small part of the admirers of 'Sam Slick' with alarm

and astonishment. The 'English in America' are in these two

volumes set forth principally as a parcel of uncouth,

disingenuous, and repulsive Puritans, who emigrated to

America in the early part of the seventeenth century for the

sake of an easier indulgence in disloyalty and schism.

Confining himself almost wholly to the events which took

place in the colony of Massachusetts, Judge Haliburton has

thought it worth while to write a book, half declamation and

half treatise, against Democracy and Dissent,--which seem to

him to be the two giant evils that oppress mankind. It is no

part of our function to discuss the abstract merits of

either of these questions; but it is perfectly within our

province to point out the errors and faults of those writers

who imagine that they can serve a party purpose by making a

convenient and derogatory use of literature.

"In the first place, then, we say that the volumes before us

are essentially unfair. The 'English in America' have not

really and truly been _such_ English as are there

described,--nor has their career been such as is there

narrated,--nor generally are the actual facts of the case

logically and impartially stated in these volumes. Judge

Haliburton colors and distorts almost every event and

circumstance to which he refers; and there is a coarseness

and rancor in the manner in which he speaks of nearly all

persons and parties who differ from him in opinion, which

has surprised and shocked us. There was no occasion whatever

for all this vehemence. In the first place, the facts

connected with the early history of the British settlements

in America are too well known to permit any attempt at

systematic and unscrupulous disparagement of the early

Puritan colonists to be in any important degree successful.

In the next place, the questions which Judge Haliburton

professes to consider have been for all practical purposes

discussed and decided long ago. In the last place, we are

quite sure that no writer on questions of colonial policy

could more effectually cut himself off from all sympathy and

influence than by the adoption of an excited and menacing

tone.

"We find in the introductory chapter to these volumes a

statement to the effect that one of the chief objects in

writing them has been to inform Englishmen that Democracy

did not appear for the first time in America during the War

of Independence; and that the peculiar form of religion that

prevailed at an early period in the New England States

exerted a very powerful influence over their politics and

modes of government. Surely there is nothing new in all

this. There is no great discovery here which required for

its introduction the expenditure of so much labor and

vehemence. We had imagined that the great orations of Burke

on Conciliation with America had exhausted long ago not only

all the facts but most of the philosophy which is contained

in the general view now revived by the author of 'Sam

Slick.' There are a sentence or two in one of the most

famous passages of perhaps the greatest of these orations

which seem to anticipate the present volumes most

completely. 'All Protestantism,' said Burke more than

seventy years ago, 'even the most cold and passive, is a

sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our

northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of

resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the

Protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion,

under a variety of denominations, agreeing in nothing but in

the communication of the spirit of liberty, is predominant

in most of the northern provinces; where the Church of

England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no

more than a sort of private sect, not composing, most

probably, the tenth of the people. The colonists left

England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants was

the highest of all; and even that stream of foreigners which

has been constantly flowing into these colonies has for the

greatest part been composed of dissenters from the

establishments of their several countries, and have brought

with them a temper and character far from alien to that of

the people with whom they mixed.' The speech of Burke in

which these sentences occur ought surely to have passed for

something in the estimation of Judge Haliburton before he

committed himself to the task of writing this book.

"We are quite sensible that as far as the mere composition

is concerned there is very great merit in its publication.

The style is vigorous and lively--and not unfrequently the

animation rises into eloquence. The narrative parts of the

volumes are in general exceedingly well written; and we must

not omit to say, that during those short intervals when the

author permits himself to lose sight of his extreme opinions

he rarely fails to delight the reader with a page or two

distinguished by acute observation and good sense.

"Still, the faults of the book are of the most serious kind.

It is incomplete in plan: for it is neither a regular

narrative, nor a treatise, nor a commentary, nor a history,

nor an article for a review--but something of all five. As

we have said, it is written in a tone highly excited and

partial; and it has the misfortune to appear before the

world as the exponent of seemingly a new, but in reality of

an old and familiar, doctrine, by employing examples and

reasonings of which very few people indeed will not be able

to detect at once either the sophistry or the

incompleteness.

"We forbear to enter into any general discussion on the

well-worn topics of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritan

settlements. The verdict of an impartial age has been long

ago pronounced on these questions: and we may well deplore

the unsound judgment of any writer of the deserved eminence

of Judge Haliburton who gratuitously brings upon himself an

imputation of outrageous eccentricity by attempting to

unsettle, on his own single authority, conclusions so well

and so long established....

"There is a great deal said in these volumes in

disparagement of the early New Englanders. They are

stigmatized as turbulent, schismatic, dishonest,

revolutionary, bigoted, cruel, and so on. These are old

charges, which have been several times placed in their true

light; and it is needless again to undertake a defence and

to enter into explanations which are familiar to most

educated persons. We are not the indiscriminate admirers of

the policy pursued by the first colonists of Massachusetts

Bay; but the course which they adopted, the communities

which they built up, and the form of liberty which they

introduced into the New World can be adequately understood

only when surveyed from a comprehensive and impartial point

of view. It is at best a shallow criticism which contents

itself with the discovery that the settlers were religious

zealots, and had no particular respect for either kings or

bishops.

... "We close these volumes. We regret that the author has

been so ill-advised as to publish them at all. They are well

written, as we have said--and in some respects possess great

merit; but truth compels us to add, that they are very

unworthy of the author and of the great questions they

profess to elucidate and discuss."

A FEW QUESTIONS FROM A WORN-OUT LORGNETTE.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY A. OAKEY HALL.

I trust I am not _now_ impertinent, however much so I may have been

heretofore. I have seen and observed a great deal. My observations

have engendered experiences. My experiences have some point to them.

And altogether, I think I am entitled to ask a few questions of those

whom I have sometimes overlooked, but now address myself to most

immediately. I am proud to say that I never belonged to but one

mistress. I was of too much value to be exchanged, lost, lightly

parted with, or--I feel prouder as I say it--_sold_. Moreover, I was a

_gage d'amour_. That fascinating Dr. ----!

But though curious, I will be discreet. This sole mistress of mine

gave me plenty to do. Many thanks to her for it, since it has given me

an insight into much that is wonderful. I am certain she preferred

opera to the drama. I saw more of the stage at the first, and more of

the audience at the last. I have found much in both to puzzle me. Some

things I have solved. As for that which remains, I had hoped to

determine for myself, but an unlucky fall from a nail has spoiled my

sight. I have been now two months imprisoned in an _escrutoire_.

Others must answer my questions.

In the first place, I want to know why theatres and opera houses have

such curious odors when empty? I have often perceived this fact when

our carriage came announced the last of all. And why are the lights

turned out when the audience have half-way reached the front doors?

What becomes of the bills which are left behind? Do the rag-pickers

ever break in? Where do the musicians go to through that little door

in the stage? And why does the kettle drummer always glance around the

house upon entering with such an air of satisfaction? As if any one

cared for _him_! Why does the leader always stop to take a pinch of

snuff, while the audience are breathing in their boots and gaiters to

catch the first note of the new opera? Why does the fat man with the

violoncello always saw upon two strings, and leave the two in the

middle to such a contemptuous silence and exile? Why do the

front-bench people get up ten minutes before the performances are

over, and rush from the house as if the floor was on fire, while the

galleries make twice as much noise by crying "hush!" and always stay

to hear the speech (if there is any), although they have not paid as

much by half as they who ran away? Why does the lover, rushing upon

the stage to the embrace of his mistress, stop half way to bow to the

ladies in the boxes? And why doesn't the aforesaid mistress box his

ears for his impoliteness? And why did she say, just before he came,

"Here comes my Alonzo! Hark! I hear his step," when every door upon

the stage was shut, and nothing was heard but the confused trampling

behind her, which might have been the galloping of donkeys? And why

did this same lady wait for him by the side of a rosewood table,

covered with satin damask, and ornamented with a Wellington

inkstand--and she dressed in a robe of shot-silk, with laces and

feathers--while he was dressed as a valiant knight of the sixteenth

century should be? And now I think of it, why did _Mr. Anderson_, in

the play of "Gisippus," visit the Roman centurion in a brick house,

entered through a mahogany door, with a brass plate upon it? Why do

the peasantry of Europe always dress with the most expensive ribbons

about their legs and arms when they come out to dance at the wedding,

or to drink from pewter mugs to the health of the bride? And why do

they stand like mutes at a funeral, whilst two people in their midst

are plotting some horrible murder? Why do the Italian banditti wear

such steeple-crowned hats when they creep through small holes, or

kneel for concealment behind rocks which only cover their foreheads?

Why do the soldiers in _Fra Diavolo_ stand and sing, "We must away,

'tis duty calls," while they sit at a table drinking punch, and seem

in no more hurry to go than if they were paid for drinking? Why do the

chamois-hunters in "Amilie" continue so urgent about going to the

mountains away, after the prey, before the dawning of the day, when it

is evident from the very nature of things that they couldn't be spared

for such a severe service on any contingency?

Why does the lover always sing tenor in an opera? What connection is

there between villany and a bass voice? What's the necessity of a

_prima donna_ singing towards the ceiling when she addresses a chorus

behind her? By what right does the head man in the chorus do all the

gesticulating, while his fellows stand like militia-men? Who ever saw

an excited basso bid a "minion away," without trying to throw his fist

behind him? Why does Ernani's mistress wear such splendid diamonds,

and not sell them to give him release from persecution? I have seen a

sentimental young lady swear to share the poverty and disgrace of her

lover, when she was fool enough to lay aside most precious jewels and

dresses, which would have purchased affluence, and then robe herself

in calico! Now, why did he permit _that_?

Why do stage heroines venture out into the woods in November in white

silk dresses? Are there never any snakes about? And why are theatrical

forests always green in the middle of winter? What kind of

thermometers do managers have? Why is it that three or four stout men,

with loaded pistols, allow themselves to be beaten off the stage by a

slim man with a small stick? In my opinion--and I don't care who hears

it--Richard the Third (whom I understand to be a natural son of one

Shakespeare) was a great numskull to allow Richmond to beat him with

the two dozen lanky-looking scoundrels who come in during the last

scene!

Why do the fairies shake so convulsively when they soar through the

air over the stage? Are stage-fairies all over the world such unequal

highflyers? Who made gaiter-boots for Juno and her attendant

goddesses, in the many classical plays I have witnessed? Did the

Egyptians and Persians know how to make cotton-cloth a yard wide--I

have measured their costumes too often behind the footlights not to

know the exact measurement.

Why do people always cough in the theatre after a severe storm of

thunder and lightning, and hold their handkerchiefs to their noses at

such times? Why does the moon, in every opera wherein she condescends

to show herself, stand still for half an hour immediately over a

chimney? What is the necessity of a man dying for love, and singing

himself to death like a swan, when he has strength enough of body and

mind to pick up three or four pounds of _bouquets_? And why does he

give them up to the spasmodic lady in white muslin, whom he has been

abusing for half an hour, and declaring, in most emphatic terms, that

they part from that time forward for ever? What wonderful

hair-invigorator do some actors use in order to grow themselves a fine

pair of bushy whiskers in fifteen minutes? How is it possible for a

noble lord to have travelled over thousands of miles, to have

encountered unheard-of perils, in order to return and marry the

miller's maid, and yet to preserve, through years of absence, the same

trousers, vest, coat, and hat, in which he first won her affections?

Mentioning hats, why does the rich landholder, in modern comedy,

sometimes go without a hat, when all his servants talk to him with

_their_ hats upon their heads? Is there any forcible, necessary, or

(to put it stronger) _absolute_, connection between a queen in

distress and large quantities of pearls strung about the hair?

These are but a twentieth part of the inquiries which crowd into my

questioning-box. I know they are disjointed,--as I soon shall be. But

I will see what can be done for me, as things here stand, before I

venture to again pile "whys" upon "wherefores."

FRAGMENTS:

FROM "THE STORY OF A SOUL," AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, WRITTEN FOR THE

INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY H. W. PARKER.

A TOUR DE FORCE.

I felt myself alone--alone as one

Who leapt in joy from starry rock to rock

Across creations stream, and joyed to know

Himself alone in starry solitudes,

Communing with his soul and God; and clomb

The heights of glory, there amazed to see

The wilderness of worlds, and feel the want

Of other hearts to share excess of bliss.

Alone!--it startled me with such a fear--

A daring fear, as only spirits can have.

At once I would be every where--on all

The peopled globes where'er myself had been;

My lonely being would I spread through all.

I thought, with the velocity of thought

Which disembodied souls alone may know--

I thought, I willed, myself in thousand places

In quick and successive instants, quick as one;

And so around again, and still around,

Without an interval. Soon as a flash,

A thousand selves were scattered o'er the deep

Of distant space; and, urging on my soul,

Around and on, with energy immortal,

And swifter still, at last I seemed to grow

Ubiquitous--a multipresence dread,

A loneliness enlarged, more awful yet--

Until, in thought's extreme rapidity,

The distant selves were blended into one,

And space was gone! The universe was lost

In me--in nothingness.

Soon it returned

And stood resplendent; space again became

A mode of thought, as thought resumed its calm,

And motion ceased with will. I found myself

Far off in outer coasts of light....

MEMORY.

.... The vision changed; for still

The cherub Fancy sports beyond the grave,

Led by the hand of Reason. Once again,

My memory rose, a painted canvas, framed

In golden mouldings of immortal joy.

But now the perfect copy of a life,

With all the colors glorified, began

To melt in slow dissolving views of truth.

From out the crowded scene of mortal deeds,

A group enraged, colossal in its shapes:

Self--a dead giant, hideous and deformed,

Lay, slain with lightning, while, upon his head,

Stood holy Love, her eyes upturned to Heaven,

Her hands extended o'er the kneeling forms

Of Faith and Hope....

MUSIC.

Nor were the splendors silent all. To spirits

'Tis ever one to see, to hear, to feel--

The music of the spheres is therefore truth,

And, now, no more I heard the noise confused

Of humming stars and murmuring moons, in tones

Discordant; but as in the focal point

Of whispering rooms, so here I found at last

The centre where the perfect chords combine--

Where the full harmonies of rolling worlds

Are poring evermore in billowy seas

Of sounds, that break in thundered syllables

Unutterable to men. A naked soul

Within the central court of space, to me

The trill of myriad stars, the heavy boom

Of giant suns that slowly came and went,

The whistlings, sweet and far, of lesser orbs,

And the low thunder of more distant deeps,

Ever commingling, grew to eloquence

No mortal brain may bear. The universe

Had found a voice....

HEAVEN.

"Look to thy God." I flamed at Him with will intense,

And soon a sea of light and love arose

And bathed my soul, and filled the empty space

With overflowing glory. All was heaven;

And all the joy, the splendor, I had known

In space, to this was but the prelude harsh

Of brazen instruments, before the song

Of some incarnate seraph, breathes and rolls

A flood of fulness o'er a tranced world.

Enough to say, whate'er we wish of scene,

Society, occupation, pleasure--

Whenever wished, is ours; and this is Heaven;

This is the prize of earthly self-denial.

Freedom, the boundless freedom of the pure--

This the reward of holy self-restraint.

A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[6]

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

We must now turn once more to Sir Philip Hastings as he sat in his

lonely room in prison. Books had been allowed him, paper, pen, and

ink, and all that could aid to pass the time; but Sir Philip had

matter for study in his own mind, and the books had remained unopened

for several days. Hour after hour, since his interview with Secretary

Vernon, and day after day he had paced that room to and fro, till the

sound of his incessant footfall was a burthen to those below. His hair

had grown very white, the wrinkles on his brow had deepened and become

many, and his head was bowed as if age had pressed it down. As he

walked, his eye beneath his shaggy eyebrow was generally bent upon the

floor, but when any accidental circumstance caused him to raise it--a

distant sound from without, or some thought passing through his own

mind--there was that curious gleam in it which I have mentioned when

describing him in boyhood, but now heightened and rendered somewhat

more wild and mysterious. At those moments the expression of his eyes

amounted almost to fierceness, and yet there was something grand, and

fixed, and calm about the brow which seemed to contradict the

impatient, irritable look.

At the moment I now speak of there was an open letter on the table,

written in his daughter's hand, and after having walked up and down

for more than one hour, he sat down as if to answer it. We must look

over his shoulder and see what he writes, as it may in some degree

tend to show the state of his mind, although it was never sent.

"MY CHILD" (it was so he addressed the dear girl who had once been the

joy of his heart): "The news which has been communicated to you by

Marlow has been communicated also to me, but has given small relief.

The world is a prison, and it is not very satisfactory to leave one

dungeon to go into a larger.

"Nevertheless, I am desirous of returning to my own house. Your mother

is very ill, with nobody to attend upon her but yourself--at least no

kindred. This situation does not please me. Can I be satisfied that

she will be well and properly cared for? Will a daughter who has

betrayed her father show more piety towards a mother? Who is there

that man can trust?"

He was going on in the same strain, and his thoughts becoming more

excited, his language more stern and bitter every moment, when

suddenly he paused, read over the lines he had written with a

gleaming eye, and then bent his head, and fell into thought. No one

can tell, no pen can describe the bitter agony of his heart at that

moment. Had he yielded to the impulse--had he spoken ever so

vehemently and fiercely, it would have been happier for him and for

all. But men will see without knowing it in passing through the world,

conventional notions which they adopt as principles. They fancy them

original thoughts, springing from their own convictions, when in

reality they are bents--biases given to their minds by the minds of

other men. The result is very frequently painful, even where the

tendency of the views received is good. Thus a shrub forced out of its

natural direction may take a more graceful or beautiful form, but

there is ever a danger that the flow of the sap may be stopped, or

some of the branches injured by the process.

"No," said Sir Philip Hastings, at length, with a false sense of

dignity thus acquired, "no, it is beneath me to reproach her. Punish

her I might, and perhaps I ought; for the deed itself is an offence to

society and to human nature more than to me. To punish her would have

been a duty, even if my own heart's blood had flowed at the same time,

in those ancient days of purer laws and higher principles; but I will

not reproach without punishing. I will be silent. I will say nothing.

I will leave her to her own conscience," and tearing the letter he had

commenced to atoms, he resumed his bitter walk about the room.

It is a terrible and dangerous thing to go on pondering for long

solitary hours on any one subject of deep interest. It is dangerous

even in the open air, under the broad, ever-varying sky, with the

birds upon the bough, and the breeze amongst the trees, and a thousand

objects in bright nature to breathe harmonies to the human heart. It

is dangerous in the midst of crowds and gay scenes of active life so

to shut the spirit up with one solitary idea, which, like the fabled

dragon's egg, is hatched into a monster by long looking at it. But

within the walls of a prison, with nothing to divert the attention,

with nothing to solicit or compel the mind even occasionally to seek

some other course, with no object in external nature, with the

companionship of no fellow being, to appeal to our senses or to awake

our sympathies, the result is almost invariable. An innocent man--a

man who has no one strong passion, or dark, all-absorbing subject of

contemplation, but who seeks for and receives every mode of relief

from the monotony of life that circumstances can afford, may endure

perfect solitude for years and live sane, but whoever condemns a

criminal--a man loaded with a great offence--to solitary confinement,

condemns him to insanity--a punishment far more cruel than death or

the rack. Hour after hour again, day after day, Sir Philip Hastings

continued to beat the floor of the prison with untiring feet. At the

end of the third day, however, he received formal notice that he would

be brought into court on the following morning, that the indictment

against him would be read, and that the attorney-general would enter a

_nolle prosequi_. Some of these forms were perhaps unnecessary, but it

was the object of the government at that time to make as strong an

impression on the public mind as possible without any unnecessary

effusion of blood.

The effect upon the mind of Sir Philip Hastings, however, was not

salutary. The presence of the judges, the crowd in the court, the act

of standing in the prisoners' dock, even the brief speech of the

lawyer commending the lenity and moderation of government, while he

moved the recording of the _nolle prosequi_, all irritated and excited

the prisoner. His irritation was shown in his own peculiar way,

however; a smile, bitter and contemptuous curled his lip. His eye

seemed to search out those who gazed at him most and stare them down,

and when he was at length set at liberty, he turned away from the dock

and walked out of the court without saying a word to any one. The

governor of the jail followed him, asking civilly if he would not

return to his house for a moment, take some refreshment, and arrange

for the removal of his baggage. It seemed as if Sir Philip answered at

all with a great effort; but in the end he replied laconically, "No, I

will send."

Two hours after he did send, and towards evening set out in a hired

carriage for his own house. He slept a night upon the road, and the

following day reached the Court towards evening. By that time,

however, a strange change had come over him. Pursuing the course of

those thoughts which I have faintly displayed, he had waged war with

his own mind--he had struggled to banish all traces of anger and

indignation from his thoughts--in short, fearing from the sensations

experienced within, that he would do or say something contrary to the

rigid rule he had imposed upon himself, he had striven to lay out a

scheme of conduct which would guard against such a result. The end of

this self-tutoring was satisfactory to him. He had fancied he had

conquered himself, but he was very much mistaken. It was only the

outer man he had subdued, but not the inner.

When the carriage drew up at his own door, and Sir Philip alighted,

Emily flew out to meet him. She threw her arms around his neck and

kissed his cheek, and her heart beat with joy and affection.

For an instant Sir Philip remained grave and stern, did not repel her,

but did not return her embrace. The next instant, however, his whole

manner changed. A sort of cunning double-meaning look came into his

eyes. He smiled, which was very unusual with him, assumed a sort of

sportiveness, which was not natural, called her "dainty Mistress

Emily," and asked after the health of "his good wife."

His coldness and his sternness might not have shocked Emily at all,

but his apparent levity pained and struck her with terror. A cold sort

of shudder passed over her, and unclasping her arms from his neck, she

replied, "I grieve to say mamma is very ill, and although the news of

your safety cheered her much, she has since made no progress, but

rather fallen back."

"Doubtless the news cheered you too very much, my sweet lady," said

Sir Philip in an affected tone, and without waiting for reply, he

walked on and ascended to his wife's room.

Emily returned to the drawing-room and fell into one of her profound

fits of meditation; but this time they were all sad and tending to

sadness. There Sir Philip found her when he came down an hour after.

She had not moved, she had not ordered lights, although the sun was

down and the twilight somewhat murky. She did not move when he

entered, but remained with her head leaning on her hand, and her eyes

fixed on the table near which she sat. Sir Philip gazed at her

gloomily, and said to himself, "Her heart smites her. Ha, ha,

beautiful deceitful thing. Have you put the canker worm in your own

bosom? Great crimes deserve great punishments. God of heaven! keep me

from such thoughts. No, no, I will never avenge myself on the plea of

avenging society. My own cause must not mingle with such

vindications."

"Emily," he said in a loud voice, which startled her suddenly from her

reverie, "Emily, your mother is very ill."

"Worse? worse?" cried Emily with a look of eager alarm; "I will fly to

her at once. Oh, sir, send for the surgeon."

"Stay," said Sir Philip, "she is no worse than when you left her,

except insomuch as a dying person becomes much worse every minute.

Your mother wishes much to see Mrs. Hazleton, who has not been with

her for two days, she says. Sit down and write that lady a note asking

her to come here to-morrow, and I will send it by a groom."

Emily obeyed, though with infinite reluctance; for she had remarked

that the visits of Mrs. Hazleton always left her mother neither

improved in temper nor in health.

The groom was dispatched, and returned with a reply from Mrs. Hazleton

to the effect that she would be there early on the following day.

During his absence, Sir Philip had been but little with his daughter.

Hardly had the note been written when he retired to his own small

room, and there remained shut up during the greater part of the

evening. Emily quietly stole into her mother's room soon after her

father left her, fearing not a little that Lady Hastings might have

remarked the strange change which had come upon her husband during his

absence. But such was not the case. She found her mother calmer and

gentler than she had been during the last week or ten days. Her

husband's liberation, and the certainty that all charge against him

was at an end, had afforded her great satisfaction; and although she

was still evidently very ill, yet she conversed cheerfully with her

daughter for nearly an hour.

"As I found you had not told your father the hopes that Mr. Marlow

held out when he went away, I spoke to him on the subject," she said.

"He is a strange cynic, my good husband, and seemed to care very

little about the matter. He doubt's Marlow's success too, I think, but

all that he said was, that if it pleased me, that was enough for him.

Mrs. Hazleton will be delighted to hear the news."

Emily doubted the fact, but she did not express her doubt, merely

telling her mother she had written to Mrs. Hazleton, and that the

servant had been sent with the note.

"She has not been over for two days," said Lady Hastings. "I cannot

think what has kept her away."

"Some accidental circumstance, I dare say," said Emily, "but there can

be no doubt she will be here to-morrow early."

They neither of them knew that on the preceding night but one Mrs.

Hazleton had received a visit from John Ayliffe, which,

notwithstanding all her self-command and assumed indifference, had

disturbed her greatly.

Mrs. Hazleton nevertheless was, as Emily anticipated, very early at

the house of Sir Philip Hastings. She first made a point of seeing

that gentleman himself; and though her manner was, as usual, calm and

lady-like, yet every word and every look expressed the greatest

satisfaction at seeing him once more in his home and at liberty. To

Emily also she was all tenderness and sweetness; but Emily, on her

part, shrunk from her with a feeling of dread and suspicion that she

could not repress, and hardly could conceal. She had not indeed read

any of the papers which Marlow had left with her, for he had not told

her to read them; but he had directed her thoughts aright, and had led

her to conclusions in regard to Mrs. Hazleton which were very painful,

but no less just.

That lady remarked a change in Emily's manner--she had seen something

of it before;--but it now struck her more forcibly, and though she

took no notice of it whatever, it was not a thing to be forgotten or

forgiven; for to those who are engaged in doing ill there cannot be a

greater offence than to be suspected, and Mrs. Hazleton was convinced

that Emily did suspect her.

After a brief interview with father and daughter, their fair guest

glided quietly up to the room of Lady Hastings, and seated herself by

her bed-side. She took the sick lady's hand in hers--that white,

emaciated hand, once so beautiful and rosy-tipped, and said how

delighted she was to see her looking a great deal better.

"Do you think so really?" said Lady Hastings; "I feel dreadfully weak

and exhausted, dear Mrs. Hazleton, and sometimes think I shall never

recover."

"Oh don't say so," replied Mrs. Hazleton; "your husband's return has

evidently done you great good: the chief part of your malady has been

mental. Anxiety of mind is often the cause of severe sickness, which

passes away as soon as it is removed. One great source of uneasiness

is now gone, and the only other that remains--I mean this unfortunate

engagement of dear Emily to Mr. Marlow--may doubtless, with a little

firmness and decision upon your part, be remedied also."

Mrs. Hazleton was very skillful in forcing the subject with which she

wished to deal, into a conversation to which it had no reference; and

having thus introduced the topic on which she loved to dwell, she went

on to handle it with her usual skill, suggesting every thing that

could irritate the invalid against Marlow, and render the idea of his

marriage with Emily obnoxious in her eyes.

Even when Lady Hastings, moved by some feelings of gratitude and

satisfaction by the intelligence of Marlow's efforts to recover her

husband's property, communicated the hopes she entertained to her

visitor, Mrs. Hazleton contrived to turn the very expectations to

Marlow's disadvantage, saying, "If such should indeed be the result,

this engagement will be still more unfortunate. With such vast

property as dear Emily will then possess, with her beauty, with her

accomplishments, with her graces, the hand of a prince would be hardly

too much to expect for her; and to see her throw herself away upon a

mere country gentleman--a Mr. Marlow--all very well in his way, but a

nobody, is indeed sad; and I would certainly prevent it, if I were

you, while I had power."

"But how can I prevent it?" asked Lady Hastings; "my husband and Emily

are both resolute in such things. I have no power, dear Mrs.

Hastings."

"You are mistaken, my sweet friend," replied her companion; "the power

will indeed soon go from you if these hopes which have been held out

do not prove fallacious. You are mistress of this house--of this very

fine property. If I understand rightly, neither your husband nor your

daughter have at present any thing but what they derive from you. This

position may soon be altered if your husband be reinstated in the

Hastings estates."

"But you would not, Mrs. Hazleton, surely you would not have me use

such power ungenerously?" said Lady Hastings.

Mrs. Hazleton saw that she had gone a little too far--or rather

perhaps that she had suggested that which was repugnant to the

character of her hearer's mind; for in regard to money matters no one

was ever more generous or careless of self than Lady Hastings. What

was her's was her husband's and her child's--she knew no

difference--she made no distinction.

It took Mrs. Hazleton some time to undo what she had done, but she

found the means at length. She touched the weak point, the failing of

character. A little stratagem, a slight device to win her own way by

an indirect method, was quite within the limits of Lady Hastings'

principles; and after dwelling some time upon a recapitulation of all

the objections against the marriage with Marlow, which could suggest

themselves to an ambitious mind, she quietly and in an easy suggestive

tone, sketched out a plan, which both to herself and her hearer,

seemed certain of success.

Lady Hastings caught at the plan eagerly, and determined to follow it

in all the details, which will be seen hereafter.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

"I feel very ill indeed this morning," said Lady Hastings, addressing

her maid about eleven o'clock. "I feel as if I were dying. Call my

husband and my daughter to me."

"Lord, my lady," said the maid, "had I not better send for the doctor

too? You do not look as if you were dying at all. You look a good deal

better, I think, my lady."

"Do I?" said Lady Hastings in a hesitating tone. But she did not want

the doctor to be sent for immediately, and repeated her order to call

her husband and her daughter.

Emily was with her in an instant, but Sir Philip Hastings was some

where absent in the grounds, and nearly half an hour elapsed before he

was found. When he entered he gazed in his wife's face with some

surprise--more surprise indeed than alarm; for he knew that she was

nervous and hypondriacal, and as the maid had said, she did not look

as if she were dying at all. There was no sharpening of the

features--no falling in of the temples--none of that pale ashy color,

or rather that leaden grayness, which precedes dissolution. He sat

down, however, by her bed-side, gazing at her with an inquiring look,

while Emily stood on the other side of the bed, and the maid at the

end; and after speaking a few kind but somewhat rambling words, he was

sending for some restoratives, saying "I think, my dear, you alarm

yourself without cause."

"I do not indeed, Philip," replied Lady Hastings. "I am sure I shall

die, and that before very long--but do not send for any thing. I would

rather not take it. It will do me more good a great deal to speak what

I have upon my mind--what is weighing me down--what is killing me."

"I am sorry to hear there is any thing," said Sir Philip, whose

thoughts, intensely busy with other things, were not yet fully

recalled to the scene before him.

"Oh, Philip, how can you say so?" said Lady Hastings, "when you know

there is. You need not go," she continued, speaking to the maid, who

was drawing back as if to quit the room, "I wish to speak to my

husband and my daughter before some one who will remember what I say."

Sir Philip however quietly rose, opened the door, and motioned to the

girl to quit the room, for such public exhibitions were quite contrary

to his notions of domestic economy. "Now, my dear," he said, "what is

it you wish to tell me? If there be any thing that you wish done, I

will do it if it is in my power."

"It is in your power, Philip," replied Lady Hastings; "you know and

Emily knows quite well that her engagement to Mr. Marlow was against

my consent, and I must say the greatest shock I ever received in my

life. I have never been well since, and every day I see more and more

reason to object. It is in the power of either of you, or both, to

relieve my mind in this respect--to break off this unhappy engagement,

and at least to let me die in peace, with the thought that my daughter

has not cast herself away. It is in your power, Philip, to--"

"Stay a moment," said her husband, "it is not in my power."

"Why, are you not her father?" asked Lady Hastings, interrupting him.

"Are you not her lawful guardian? Have you not the disposal of her

hand?"

"It is not in my power," repeated Sir Philip coldly, "to break my

plighted word, to violate my honor, or to live under a load of shame

and dishonor."

"Why in such a matter as this," said Lady Hastings, "there is no such

disgrace. You can very well say you have thought better of it."

"In which case I should tell a lie," said Sir Philip dryly.

"It is a thing done every day," argued Lady Hastings.

"I am not a man to do any thing because there are others who do it

every day," answered her husband. "Men lie, and cheat, and swindle,

and steal, and betray their friends, and relations, and parents, but I

can find no reason therein for doing the same. It is not in my power,

I repeat. I cannot be a scoundrel, whatever other men may be, and

violate my plighted word, or withdraw from my most solemn engagements.

Moreover, when Marlow heard of the misfortunes which have befallen us,

and learned that Emily would not have one-fourth part of that which

she had at one time a right to expect, he showed no inclination to

withdraw from his word, even when there was a good excuse, and I will

never withdraw from mine, so help me God."

Thus speaking he turned his eyes towards the ground again and fell

into a deep reverie.

While this conversation had been passing, Emily had sunk upon her

knees, trembling in every limb, and hid her face in the coverings of

the bed. To her, Lady Hastings now turned. Whether it was that remorse

and some degree of shame affected her, when she saw the terrible

agitation of her child, I cannot tell, but she paused for a moment as

if in hesitation.

She spoke at length, saying "Emily, my child, to you I must appeal, as

your father is so obdurate."

Emily made no answer, however, but remained weeping, and Lady Hastings

becoming somewhat irritated, went on in a sharper tone. "What! will

not my own child listen to the voice of a dying mother?" she asked

rather petulantly than sorrowfully, although she tried hard to make

her tone gravely reproachful; "will she not pay any attention to her

mother's last request?

"Oh, my mother," answered Emily, raising her head, and speaking more

vehemently than was customary with her, "ask me any thing that is

just; ask me any thing that is reasonable; but do not ask me to do

what is wrong and what is unjust. I have made a promise--do not ask me

to break it. There is no circumstance changed which could give even an

excuse for such a breach of faith. Marlow has only shown himself more

true, more faithful, more sincere. Should I be more false, more

faithless, more ungenerous than he thought me? Oh no! it is

impossible--quite impossible," and she hid her streaming eyes in the

bed-clothes again, clasping her hands tightly together over her

forehead.

Her father, with his arms crossed upon his chest, had kept his eyes

fixed upon her while she spoke with a look of doubt and inquiry. Well

might he doubt--well might he doubt his own suspicions. There was a

truth, a candor, a straightforwardness, in that glowing face which

gave the contradiction, plain and clear, to every foul, dishonest

charge which had been fabricated against his child. It was impossible

in fact that she could have so spoken and so looked, unless she had so

felt. The best actress that ever lived could not have performed that

part. There would have been something too much or too little,

something approaching the exaggerated or the tame. With Emily there

was nothing. What she said seemed but the sudden outburst of her

heart, pressed for a reply; and as soon as it was spoken she sunk down

again in silence, weeping bitterly under the conflict of two strong

but equally amiable feelings.

For a moment the sight seemed to rouse Sir Philip Hastings. "She

should not, if she would," he said; "voluntarily, and knowing what she

did, she consented to the promise I have made, and she neither can nor

shall retract. To Marlow, indeed, I may have a few words to say, and

he shall once more have the opportunity of acting as he pleases; but

Emily is bound as well as myself, and by that bond we must abide."

"What have you to say to Marlow?" asked Lady Hastings in a tone of

commonplace curiosity, which did not at all indicate a sense of that

terrible situation in which she assumed she was placed.

"That matters not," answered Sir Philip. "It will rest between him and

me at his return. How he may act I know not--what he may think I know

not; but he shall be a partaker of my thoughts and the master of his

own actions. Do not let us pursue this painful subject further. If you

feel yourself ill, my love, let us send for further medical help. I do

hope and believe that you are not so ill as you imagine; but if you

are so there is more need that the physician should be here, and that

we should quit topics too painful for discussion, where discussion is

altogether useless."

"Well, then, mark me," said Lady Hastings with an air of assumed

melancholy dignity, which being quite unnatural to her, bordered

somewhat on the burlesque; "mark me, Philip--mark me, Emily! your

wife, your mother, makes it her last dying request--her last dying

injunction, that you break off this marriage. You may or you may not

give me the consolation on this sick bed of knowing that my request

will be complied with; but I do not think that either of you will be

careless, will be remorseless enough to carry out this engagement

after I am gone. I will not threaten, Emily--I will not even attempt

to take away from you the wealth for which this young man doubtless

seeks you--I will not attempt to deter you by bequeathing you my curse

if you do not comply with my injunctions; but I tell you, if you do

not make me this promise before I die, you have embittered your

mother's last moments, and--"

"Oh, forbear, forbear," cried Emily, starting up. "For God's sake,

dear mother, forbear," and clasping her hands wildly over her eyes,

she rushed frantically out of the room.

Sir Philip Hastings remained for nearly half an hour longer, and then

descended the stairs and passed through the drawing-room. Emily was

seated there with her handkerchief upon her eyes, and her whole frame

heaving from the agonized sobs which rose from her bosom. Sir Philip

paused and gazed at her for a moment or two, but Emily did not say a

word, and seemed indeed totally unconscious of his presence. Some

movements of compassion, some feeling of sympathy, some doubts of his

preconceptions might pass through the bosom of Sir Philip Hastings;

but the dark seeds of suspicion had been sown in his bosom--had

germinated, grown up, and strengthened--had received confirmation

strong and strange, and he murmured to himself as he stood and gazed

at her, "Is it anger or sorrow? Is it passion or pain? All this is

strange enough. I do not understand it. Her resolution is taken, and

taken rightly. Why should she grieve? Why should she be thus moved,

when she knows she is doing that which is just, and honest, and

faithful?"

He measured a cloud by an ell wand. He gauged her heart, her

sensibilities, her mind, by the rigid metre of his own, and he found

that the one could not comprehend the other. Turning hastily away

after he had finished his contemplation, without proffering one word

of consolation or support, he walked away into his library, and

ringing a bell, ordered his horse to be saddled directly. While that

was being done, he wrote a hasty note to Mr. Short, the surgeon, and

when the horse was brought round gave it to a groom to deliver. Then

mounting on horseback, he rode away at a quick pace, without having

taken any further notice of his daughter.

Emily remained for about half an hour after his departure, exactly in

the same position in which he had left her. She noticed nothing that

was passing around her; she heard not a horse stop at the door; and

when her own maid entered the room and said,--"Doctor Short has come,

ma'am, and is with my lady. Sir Philip sent Peter for him; but Peter

luckily met him just down beyond the park gates;" Emily hardly seemed

to hear her.

A few minutes after, Mr. Short descended quietly from the room of Lady

Hastings, and looked into the drawing-room as he passed. Seeing the

beautiful girl seated there in that attitude of despondency, he

approached her quietly, saying, "Do not, my dear mistress Emily,

suffer yourself to be alarmed without cause. I see no reason for the

least apprehension. My good lady, your mother is nervous and excited,

but there are no very dangerous symptoms about her--certainly none

that should cause immediate alarm; and I think upon the whole, that

the disease is more mental than corporeal."

Emily had raised her eyes when he had just begun to speak, and she

shook her head mournfully at his last, words, saying, "I can do

nothing to remedy it, Mr. Short--I would at any personal sacrifice,

but this involves more--I can do nothing."

"But I have done my best," said Mr. Short with a kindly smile; for he

was an old and confidential friend of the whole family, and upon Emily

herself had attended from her childhood, during all the little

sicknesses of early life. "I asked your excellent mother what had so

much excited her, and she told me all that has passed this morning. I

think, my dear young lady, I have quieted her a good deal."

"How? how?" exclaimed Emily eagerly. "Oh tell me how, Mr. Short, and I

will bless you!"

The good old surgeon seated himself beside her and took her hand in

his. "I have only time to speak two words," he said, "but I think they

will give you comfort. Your mother explained to me that there had been

a little discussion this morning when she thought herself

dying--though that was all nonsense--and it must have been very

painful to you, my dear Mistress Emily. She told me what it was about

too, and seemed half sorry already for what she had said. So, as I

guessed how matters went--for I know that the dear lady is fond of

titles and rank, and all that, and saw she had a great deal mistaken

Mr. Marlow's position--I just ventured to tell her that he is the heir

of the old Earl of Launceston--that is to say, if the Earl does not

marry again, and he is seventy-three, with a wife still living. She

had never heard any thing about it, and it seemed to comfort her

amazingly. Nevertheless she is in a sad nervous state, and somewhat

weak. I do not altogether like that cough she has either; and so, my

dear young lady, I will send her over a draught to-night, of which you

must give her a tablespoonful every three hours. Give it to her with

your own hands; for it is rather strong, and servants are apt to make

mistakes. But I think if you go to her now, you will find her in a

very different humor from that which she was in this morning. Good

bye, good bye. Don't be cast down, Mistress Emily. All will go well

yet."

CHAPTER XL.

From the house of Sir Philip Hastings Mr. Short rode quickly on to the

cottage of Mistress Best, which he had visited once before in the

morning. The case of John Ayliffe, however, was becoming more and more

urgent every moment, and at each visit the surgeon saw a change in the

countenance of the young man which indicated that a greater change

still was coming. He had had a choice of evils to deal with; for

during the first day after the accident there had been so much fever

that he had feared to give any thing to sustain the young man's

strength. But long indulgence in stimulating liquors had had its usual

effect in weakening the powers of the constitution, and rendering it

liable to give way suddenly even where the corporeal powers seemed at

their height. Wine had become to John Ayliffe what water is to most

men, and he could not bear up without it. Exhaustion had succeeded

rapidly to the temporary excitement of fever, and mortification had

begun to show itself on the injured limb. Wine had become necessary,

and it was administered in frequent and large doses; but as a

stimulant it had lost its effect upon the unhappy young man, and when

the surgeon returned to the cottage on this occasion, he saw not only

that all hope was at an end, but that the end could not be very far

distant.

Good Mr. Dixwell was seated by John Ayliffe's side, and looked up to

the surgeon with an anxious eye. Mr. Short felt his patient's pulse

with a very grave face. It was rapid, but exceedingly feeble--went on

for twenty or thirty beats as fast as it could go--then stopped

altogether for an instant or two, and then began to beat again as

quickly as before.

Mr. Short poured out a tumbler full of port wine, raised John Ayliffe

a little, and made him drink it down. After a few minutes he felt his

pulse again, and found it somewhat stronger. The sick man looked

earnestly in his face as if he wished to ask some question; but he

remained silent for several minutes.

At length he said, "Tell me the truth, Short. Am not I dying?"

The surgeon hesitated, but Mr. Dixwell raised his eyes, saying, "Tell

him the truth, tell him the truth, my good friend. He is better

prepared to bear it than he was yesterday."

"I fear you are sinking, Sir John," said the surgeon.

"I do not feel so much pain in my leg," said the young man.

"That is because mortification has set in," replied Mr. Short.

"Then there is no hope," said John Ayliffe.

The surgeon was silent; and after a moment John Ayliffe said, "God's

will be done."

Mr. Dixwell pressed his hand kindly with tears in his eyes; for they

were the Christian words he had longed to hear, but hardly hoped for.

There was a long and somewhat sad pause, and then the dying man once

more turned his look upon the surgeon, asking, "How long do you think

it will be?"

"Three or four hours," replied Mr. Short. "By stimulants, as long as

you can take them, it may be protracted a little longer, but not

much."

"Every moment is of consequence," said the clergyman. "There is much

preparation still needful--much to be acknowledged and repented

of--much to be atoned for. What can be done, my good friend to

protract the time?"

"Give small quantities of wine very frequently," answered the surgeon,

"and perhaps some aqua vitae--but very little--very little, or you may

hurry the catastrophe."

"Well, well," said John Ayliffe, "you can come again, but perhaps by

that time I shall be gone. You will find money enough in my pockets,

Short, to pay your bill--there is plenty there, and mind you send the

rest to my mother."

The surgeon stared, and said to himself, "he is wandering;" but John

Ayliffe immediately added, "Don't let that rascal Shanks have it, but

send it to my mother;" and saying "Very well, Sir John," he took his

leave and departed.

"And now, my dear young friend," said Mr. Dixwell, the moment the

surgeon was gone, "there is no time to be lost. You have the power of

making full atonement for the great offence you have committed to one

of your fellow creatures. If you sincerely repent, as I trust you do,

Christ has made atonement for your offences towards God. But you must

show your penitence by letting your last acts in this life be just and

right. Let me go to Sir Philip Hastings."

"I would rather see his daughter, or his wife," said John Ayliffe: "he

is so stern, and hard, and gloomy. He will never speak comfort or

forgiveness."

"You are mistaken--I can assure you, you are mistaken," answered the

clergyman. "I will take upon me to promise that he shall not say one

hard word, and grant you full forgiveness."

"Well, well," said the young man, "if it must be he, so be it--but

mind to have pen and ink to write it all down--that pen won't write.

You know you tried it this morning."

"I will bring one with me," said Mr. Dixwell, rising eager to be gone

on his good errand; but John Ayliffe stopped him, saying, "Stay,

stay--remember you are not to tell him any thing about it till he is

quite away from his own house. I don't choose to have all the people

talking of it, and perhaps coming down to stare at me."

Mr. Dixwell was willing to make any terms in order to have what he

wished accomplished, and giving Mrs. Best directions to let the

patient have some port wine every half hour, he hurried away to the

Court.

On inquiring for Sir Philip, the servant said that his master had

ridden out.

"Do you know where he is gone, and how long he will be absent?" asked

Mr. Dixwell.

"He is gone, I believe, to call at Doctor Juke's, to consult about my

lady," replied the man; "and as that is hard upon twenty miles, he

can't be back for two or three hours."

"That is most unfortunate," exclaimed the clergyman. "Is your lady

up?"

The servant replied in the negative, adding the information that she

was very ill.

"Then I must see Mistress Emily," said Mr. Dixwell, walking into the

house. "Call her to me as quickly as you can."

The man obeyed, and Emily was with the clergyman in a few moments,

while the servant remained in the hall looking out through the open

door.

After remaining in conversation with Mr. Dixwell for a few minutes,

Emily hurried back to her room, and came down again dressed for

walking. She and Mr. Dixwell went out together, and the servant saw

them take their way down the road in the direction of Jenny Best's

cottage: but when they had gone a couple of hundred yards, the

clergyman turned off towards his own house, walking at a very quick

pace, while Emily proceeded slowly on her way.

When at a short distance from the cottage, the beautiful girl stopped,

and waited till she was rejoined by Mr. Dixwell, who came up very

soon, out of breath at the quickness of his pace. "I have ordered the

wine down directly," he said, "and I trust we shall be able to keep

him up till he has told his story his own way. Now, my dear young

lady, follow me;" and walking on he entered the cottage.

Emily was a good deal agitated. Every memory connected with John

Ayliffe was painful to her. It seemed as if nothing but misfortune,

sorrow, and anxiety, had attended her ever since she first saw him,

and all connected themselves more or less with him. The strange sort

of mysterious feeling of sympathy which she had experienced when first

she beheld him, and which had seemed explained to her when she learned

their near relationship, had given place day by day to stronger and

stronger personal dislike, and she could not now even come to visit

him on his death-bed with the clergyman without feeling a mixture of

repugnance and dread which she struggled with not very successfully.

They passed, however, through the outer into the inner room where

Mistress Best was sitting with the dying man, reading to him the New

Testament. But as soon as Mr. Dixwell, who had led the way, entered,

the good woman stopped, and John Ayliffe turned his head faintly

towards the door.

"Ah, this is very kind of you," he said when he saw Emily, "I can tell

you all better than any one else."

"Sir Philip is absent," said Mr. Dixwell, "and will not be home for

several hours."

"Hours!" repeated John Ayliffe. "My time is reduced to minutes!"

Emily approached quietly, and Mrs. Best quitted the room and shut the

door. Mr. Dixwell drew the table nearer to the bed, spread some

writing paper which he had brought with him upon it, and dipped a pen

in the ink, as a hint that no time was to be lost in proceeding.

"Well, well," said John Ayliffe with a sigh, "I won't delay, though it

is very hard to have to tell such a story. Mistress Emily, I have done

you and your family great wrong and great harm, and I am very, very

sorry for it, especially for what I have done against you."

"Then I forgive you from all my heart," cried Emily, who had been

inexpressibly shocked at the terrible change which the young man's

appearance presented. She had never seen death, nor was aware of the

terrible shadow which the dark banner of the great Conqueror often

casts before it.

"Thank you, thank you," replied John Ayliffe; "but you must not

suppose, Mistress Emily, that all the evil I have done was out of my

own head. Others prompted me to a great deal; although I was ready

enough to follow their guidance, I must confess. The two principal

persons were Shanks the lawyer, and Mrs. Hazleton--Oh, that woman is,

I believe, the devil incarnate."

"Hush, hush," said Mr. Dixwell, "I cannot put such words as those

down, nor should you speak them. You had better begin in order too,

and tell all from the commencement, but calmly and in a Christian

spirit, remembering that this is your own confession, and not an

accusation of others."

"Well, I will try," said the young man faintly, lifting his hand from

the bed-clothes, as if to put it to his head in the act of thought.

But he was too weak, and he fell back again, and fixing his eyes on a

spot in the wall opposite the foot of the bed, he continued in a sort

of dreamy commemorative way as follows: "I loved you--yes, I loved you

very much--I feel it now more than ever--I loved you more than you

ever knew--more than I myself knew then. (Emily bent her head and hid

her eyes with her hands.) It was not," he proceeded to say, "that you

were more beautiful than any of the rest--although that was true

too--but there was somehow a look about you, an air when you moved, a

manner when you spoke, that made it seem as if you were of a different

race from the rest--something higher, brighter, better, and as if your

nobler nature shone out like a gleam on all you did--I cannot help

thinking that if you could have loved me in return, mine would have

been a different fate, a different end, a different and brighter hope

even now--"

"You are wandering from the subject, my friend," said Mr. Dixwell.

"Time is short."

"I am not altogether wandering," said John Ayliffe, "but I feel faint.

Give me some more wine." When he had got it, he continued thus: "I

found you could not love me--I said in my heart that you would not

love me; and my love turned into hate--at least I thought so--and I

determined you should rue the day that you had refused me. Long before

that, however, Shanks the lawyer had put it into my head that I could

take your father's property and title from him, and I resolved some

day to try, little knowing all that it would lead me into step by

step. I had heard my mother say a hundred times that she had been as

good as married to your uncle who was drowned, and that if right had

been done I ought to have had the property. So I set to work with

Shanks to see what could be done. Sometimes he led, sometimes I led;

for he was a coward, and wanted to do all by cunning, and I was bold

enough, and thought every thing was to be done by daring. We had both

of us got dipped so deep in there was no going back. I tore one leaf

out of the parish register myself, to make it seem that your

grandfather had caused the record of my mother's marriage to be

destroyed--but that was no marriage at all--they never were

married--and that's the truth. I did a great number of other very evil

things, and then suddenly Mrs. Hazleton came in to help us; and

whenever there was any thing particularly shrewd and keen to be

devised, especially if there was a spice of malice in it towards Sir

Philip or yourself, Mrs. Hazleton planned it for us--not telling us

exactly to do this thing or that, but asking if it could not be done,

or if it would be very wrong to do it. But I'll tell you them all in

order--all that we did."

He went on to relate a great many particulars with which the reader is

already acquainted. He told the whole villainous schemes which had

been concocted between himself, the attorney, and Mrs. Hazleton, and

which had been in part, or as a whole, executed to the ruin of Sir

Philip Hastings' fortune and peace. The good clergyman took down his

words with a rapid hand, as he spoke, though it was somewhat

difficult; for the voice became more and more faint and low.

"There is no use in trying now," said John Ayliffe in conclusion,

"when I am going before God who has seen and known it all. There is no

use in trying to conceal any thing. I was as ready to do evil as they

were to prompt me, and I did it with a willing heart, though sometimes

I was a little frightened at what I was doing, especially in the night

when I could not sleep. I am sorry enough for it now--I repent from my

whole heart; and now tell me--tell me, can you forgive me?"

"As far as I am concerned, I forgive you entirely," said Emily, with

the tears in her eyes, "and I trust that your repentance will be fully

accepted. As to my father, I am sure that he will forgive you also,

and I think I may take upon myself to say, that he will either come or

send to you this night to express his forgiveness."

"No, no, no," said the young man with a great effort. "He must not

come--he must not send. I have made the atonement that he (pointing to

Mr. Dixwell) required, and I have but one favor to ask. Pray, pray

grant it to me. It is but this. That you will not tell any one of this

confession so long as I am still living. He has got it all down. It

can't be needed for a few hours, and in a few, a very few, I shall be

gone. Mr. Dixwell will tell you when it is all over. Then tell what

you like; but I would rather not die with more shame upon my head if I

can help it."

The good clergyman was about to reason with him upon the differences

between healthful shame, and real shame, and false shame, but Emily

gently interposed, saying, "It does not matter, my dear sir; a few

hours can make no difference."

Then rising, she once more repeated the words of forgiveness, and

added, "I will now go and pray for you, my poor cousin--I will pray

that your repentance may be sincere and true--that it may be accepted

for Christ's sake, and that God may comfort you and support you even

at the very last."

Mr. Dixwell rose too, and telling John Ayliffe that he would return in

a few minutes, accompanied Emily back towards her house. They parted,

however, at the gates of the garden; and while Emily threaded her way

through innumerable gravelled walks, the clergyman went back to the

cottage, and once more resumed his place by the side of the dying man.

CHAPTER XLI.

Sir Philip Hastings returned to his own house earlier than had been

expected, bringing with him the physician he had gone to seek, and

whom--contrary to the ordinary course of events--he had found at once.

They both went up to Lady Hastings's room where the physician,

according to the usual practice of medical men in consultation,

approved of all that his predecessor had done, yet ordered some

insignificant changes in the medicines in order to prove that he had

not come there for nothing. He took the same view of the case that Mr.

Short had taken, declaring that there was no immediate danger; but at

the same time he inquired particularly how that lady rested in the

night, whether she started in her sleep, was long watchful, and

whether she breathed freely during slumber.

The maid's account was not very distinct in regard to several of these

points; but she acknowledged that it was her young lady who usually

sat up with Lady Hastings till three or four o'clock in the morning.

Sir Philip immediately directed Emily to be summoned, but the maid

informed him she had gone out about an hour and a half before, and had

not then returned.

When the physician took his leave and departed, Sir Philip summoned

the butler to his presence, and inquired, with an eager yet gloomy

tone, if he knew where Mistress Emily had gone.

"I really do not, Sir Philip," replied the man. "She went out with Mr.

Dixwell, but they parted a little way down the road, and my young lady

went on as if she were going to farmer Wallop's or Jenny Best's."

At the latter name Sir Philip started as if a serpent had stung him,

and he waved to the man to quit the room. As soon as he was alone he

commenced pacing up and down in more agitation than he usually

displayed, and once or twice words broke from him which gave some

indications of what was passing in his mind.

"Too clear, too clear," he said, and then after a pause exclaimed,

holding up his hands; "so young, and so deceitful! Marlow must be told

of this, and then must act as he thinks fit--it were better she were

dead--far better! What is the cold, dull corruption of the grave, the

mere rotting of the flesh, and the mouldering of the bones, to this

corruption of the spirit, this foul dissolution of the whole moral

nature?"

He then began to pace up and down more vehemently than before, fixing

his eyes upon the ground, and seeming to think profoundly, with a

quivering lip and knitted brow. "Hard, hard task for a father," he

said--"God of heaven that I should ever dream of such a thing!--yet it

might be a duty. What can Marlow be doing during this long unexplained

absence? France--can he have discovered all this and quitted her,

seeking, in charity, to make the breach as little painful as possible?

Perhaps, after all," he continued, after a few moments' thought, "the

man may have been mistaken when he told me that he believed that this

young scoundrel was lying ill of a fall at this woman's cottage; yet

at the best it was bad enough to quit a sick mother's bed-side for

long hours, when I too was absent. Can she have done it to show her

spleen at this foolish opposition to her marriage?"

There is no character so difficult to deal with--there is none which

is such a constant hell to its possessor--as that of a moody man. Sir

Philip had been moody, as I have endeavored to show, from his very

earliest years; but all the evils of that sort of disposition had

increased upon him rapidly during the latter part of his life.

Unaware, like all the rest of mankind, of the faults of his own

character, he had rather encouraged than struggled against its many

great defects. Because he was stern and harsh, he fancied himself

just, and forgot that it is not enough for justice to judge rightly of

that which is placed clearly and truly before it, and did not

remember, or at all events apply the principle, that an accurate

search for truth, and an unprejudiced suspension of opinion till truth

has been obtained, are necessary steps to justice. Suspicion--always a

part and parcel of the character of the moody man--had of late years

obtained a strong hold upon him, and unfortunately it had so happened

that event after event had occurred to turn his suspicion against his

own guiltless child. The very lights and shades of her character,

which he could in no degree comprehend, from his own nature being

destitute of all such impulsiveness, had not only puzzled him, but

laid the foundation of doubts. Then the little incident which I have

related in a preceding part of this work, regarding the Italian

singing-master--Emily's resolute but unexplained determination to take

no more lessons from that man, had set his moody mind to ponder and to

doubt still more. The too successful schemes and suggestions of Mrs.

Hazleton had given point and vigor to his suspicions, and the betrayal

of his private conversation to the government had seemed a climax to

the whole, so that he almost believed his fair sweet child a fiend

concealed beneath the form of an angel.

It was in vain that he asked himself, What could be her motives? He

had an answer ready, that her motives had always been a mystery to

him, even in her lightest acts. "There are some people," he thought,

"who act without motives--in whom the devil himself seems to have

implanted an impulse to do evil without any cause or object, for the

mere pleasure of doing wrong."

On the present occasion he had accidentally heard from the farmer, who

was the next neighbor of Jenny Best, that he was quite certain Sir

John Hastings, as he called him, was lying ill from a fall at that

good woman's cottage. His horse had been found at a great distance on

a wild common, with the bridle broken, and every appearance of having

fallen over in rearing. Blood and other marks of an accident had been

discovered on the road. Mr. Short, the surgeon, was seen to pay

several visits every day to the old woman's house, and yet maintained

the most profound secrecy in regard to his patient. The farmer argued

that the surgeon would not be so attentive unless that patient was a

person of some importance, and it was clear he was not one of Jenny

Best's own family, for every member of it had been well and active

after the surgeon's visits had been commenced.

All these considerations, together with the absence of John Ayliffe

from his residence, had led the good farmer to a right conclusion, and

he had stated the fact broadly to Sir Philip Hastings.

Sir Philip, on his part, had made no particular inquiries, for the

very name of John Ayliffe was hateful to him; but when he heard that

his daughter had gone forth alone to that very cottage, and had

remained there for a considerable time in the same place with the man

whom he abhorred, and remembered that the tale which had been boldly

put forth of her having visited him in secret, the very blood, as it

flowed through his heart, seemed turned into fire, and his brain

reeled with anguish and indignation.

Presently the hall door was heard to open, and there was a light step

in the passage. Sir Philip darted forth from his room, and met his

daughter coming in with a sad and anxious face, and as he thought with

traces of tears upon her eyelids.

"Where have you been?" asked her father in a stern low tone.

"I have been to Jenny Best's down the lane, my father," replied Emily,

startled by his look and manner, but still speaking the plain truth,

as she always did. "Is my mother worse?"

Without a word of reply Sir Philip turned away into his room again and

closed the door.

Alarmed by her father's demeanor, Emily hurried up at once to Lady

Hastings's room, but found her certainly more cheerful and apparently

better.

The assurance given by the physician that there was no immediate

danger, nor any very unfavorable symptom, had been in a certain degree

a relief to Lady Hastings herself; for, although she had undoubtedly

been acting a part when in the morning she had declared herself dying,

yet, as very often happens with those who deceive, she had so far

partially deceived herself as to believe that she was in reality very

ill. She was surprised at Emily's sudden appearance and alarmed look,

but her daughter did not think it right to tell her the strange

demeanor of Sir Philip, but sitting down as calmly as she could by her

mother's side, talked to her for several minutes on indifferent

subjects. It was evident to Emily that, although her father's tone was

so harsh, her mother viewed her more kindly than in the morning, and

the information which had been given her by the surgeon accounted for

the change. The conduct of Sir Philip, however, seemed not to be

explained, and Emily could hardly prevent herself from falling into

one of those reveries which have often been mentioned before. She

struggled against the tendency, however, for some time, till at length

she was relieved by the announcement that Mistress Hazleton was below,

but when Lady Hastings gave her maid directions to bring her friend

up, Emily could refrain no longer from uttering at least one word of

warning.

"Give me two minutes more, dear mamma," she said, in a low voice. "I

have something very particular to say to you--let Mrs. Hazleton wait

but for two minutes."

"Well," said Lady Hastings, languidly; and then turning to the maid

she added, "Tell dear Mrs. Hazleton that I will receive her in five

minutes, and when I ring my bell, bring her up."

As soon as the maid had retired Emily sank upon her knees by her

mother's bed-side, and kissed her hand, saying, "I have one great

favor to ask, dear mother, and I beseech you to grant it."

"Well, my child," answered Lady Hastings, thinking she was going to

petition for a recall of her injunction against the marriage with

Marlow, "I have but one object in life, my dear Emily, and that is

your happiness. I am willing to make any sacrifice of personal

feelings for that object. What is it you desire?"

"It is merely this," replied Emily, "that you would not put any trust

or confidence whatever in Mrs. Hazleton. That you would doubt her

representations, and confide nothing to her, for a short time at

least."

Lady Hastings looked perfectly aghast. "What do yon mean, Emily?" she

said. "What can you mean? Put no trust in Mrs. Hazleton, my oldest and

dearest friend?"

"She is not your friend," replied Emily, earnestly, "nor my friend,

nor my father's friend, but the enemy of every one in this house. I

have long had doubts--Marlow changed those doubts into suspicions,

and this day I have accidentally received proof positive of her cruel

machinations against my father, yourself, and me. This justifies me in

speaking as I now do, otherwise I should have remained silent still."

"But explain, explain, my child," said Lady Hastings. "What has she

done? What are these proofs you talk of? I cannot comprehend at all

unless you explain."

"There would be no time, even if I were not bound by a promise,"

replied Emily; "but all I ask is that you suspend all trust and

confidence in Mrs. Hazleton for one short day--perhaps it may be

sooner; but I promise you that at the end of that time, if not before,

good Mr. Dixwell shall explain every thing to you, and place in your

hands a paper which will render all Mrs. Hazleton's conduct for the

last two years perfectly clear and distinct."

"But do tell me something, at least, Emily," urged her mother. "I hate

to wait in suspense. You used to be very fond of Mrs. Hazleton and she

of you. When did these suspicions of her first begin, and how?"

"Do you not remember a visit I made to her some time ago," replied

Emily, "when I remained with her for several days? Then I first

learned to doubt her. She then plotted and contrived to induce me to

do what would have been the most repugnant to your feelings and my

father's, as well as to my own. But moreover she came into my room one

night walking in her sleep, and all her bitter hatred showed itself

then."

"Good gracious! What did she say? What did she do?" exclaimed Lady

Hastings, now thoroughly forgetting herself in the curiosity Emily's

words excited.

Her daughter related all that had occurred on the occasion of Mrs.

Hazleton's sleeping visit to her room, and repeated her words as

nearly as she could recollect them.

"But why, my dearest child, did you not tell us all this before?"

asked Lady Hastings.

"Because the words were spoken in sleep," answered Emily, "and excited

at the time but a vague doubt. Sleep is full of delusions; and though

I thought the dream must be a strange one which could prompt such

feelings, yet still it might all be a troublous dream. It was not till

afterwards, when I saw cause to believe that Mrs. Hazleton wished to

influence me in a way which I thought wrong, that I began to suspect

the words that had come unconsciously from the depths of her secret

heart. Since then suspicion has increased every day, and now has

ripened into certainty. I tell you, dear mother, that good Mr.

Dixwell, whom you know and can trust, has the information as well as

myself. But we are both bound to be silent as to the particulars for

some hours more. I could not let Mrs. Hazleton be with you again,

however--remembering, as I do, that seldom has she crossed this

threshold or we crossed hers, without some evil befalling us--and not

say as much as I have said, to give you the only hint in my power of

facts which, if you knew them fully, you could judge of much better

than myself. Believe me, dear mother, that as soon as I am

permitted--and a very few hours will set me free--I will fly at once

to tell you all, and leave you and my father to decide and act as your

own good judgment shall direct."

"You had better tell me first, Emily," replied Lady Hastings; "a woman

can always best understand the secrets of a woman's heart. I wish you

had not made any promise of secrecy; but as you have, so it must be.

Has Marlow had any share in this discovery?" she added, with some

slight jealousy of his influence over her daughter's mind.

"Not in the least with that which I have made to-day," replied Emily;

"but I need not at all conceal from you that he has long suspected

Mrs. Hazleton of evil feelings and evil acts towards our whole family;

and that he believes that he has discovered almost to a certainty that

Mrs. Hazleton aided greatly in all the wrong and injury that has been

done my father. The object of his going to France was solely to trace

out the whole threads of the intrigue, and he went, not doubting in

the least that he should succeed in restoring to my parents all that

has been unjustly taken from them. That such a restoration must take

place, I now know; but what he has learned or what he has done I

cannot tell you, for I am not aware. I am sure, however, that if he

brings all he hopes about, it will be his greatest joy to have aided

to right you even in a small degree."

"I do believe he is a very excellent and amiable young man," said Lady

Hastings thoughtfully.

She seemed as if she were on the point of saying something farther on

the subject of Marlow's merits; but then checked herself, and added,

"But now indeed, Emily, I think I ought to send for Mrs. Hazleton."

"But you promise me, dear mother," urged Emily eagerly, "that you will

put no faith in any thing she tells you, and will not confide in her

in any way till you have heard the whole?"

"That I certainly will take care to avoid, my dear," replied Lady

Hastings. "After what you have told me, it would be madness to put any

confidence in her--especially when a few short hours will reveal all.

You are sure, Emily, that it will not be longer!"

"Perfectly certain, my dear mother," answered her daughter. "I would

not have promised to refrain from speaking, had I not been certain

that the time for such painful concealment must be very short."

"Well, then, my dear child, ring the bell," said Lady Hastings. "I

will be very guarded merely on your assurances, for I am sure that you

are always candid and sincere whatever your poor father may think."

Emily rung the bell, and retired to her own room, repeating

mournfully to herself, "whatever my poor father may think!--Well,

well," she added, "the time will soon come when he will be undeceived,

and do his child justice. Alas, that it should ever have been

otherwise!"

She found relief in tears; and while she wept in solitude Lady

Hastings prepared to receive Mrs. Hazleton with cold dignity. She had

fully resolved when Emily left her to be as silent as possible in

regard to every thing that had occurred that day, not to allude

directly or indirectly to the warning which had been given her, and to

leave Mrs. Hazleton to attribute her unwonted reserve to caprice or

any thing else she pleased. But the resolutions of Lady Hastings were

very fragile commodities when she fell into the hands of artful people

who knew her character, and one was then approaching not easily

frustrated in her designs.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R.

James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for

the Southern District of New-York.

Continued from page 41.

NEWSPAPER POETS: CHARLES WELDON.

Some of the best poetry in America makes its appearance in the

newspapers, without pretension, and often without the names of its

authors. It is enough for them to write, and publish, whoever will may

take the fame. This indifference to public opinion does not arise from

any want of autorial vanity perhaps, but in most cases from that

modesty which an acquaintance with and self-measurement by the best

standards never fails to produce in sincere lovers of art.

Recently a series of noticeable poems has from time to time appeared

in the _Tribune_, without any name or clue to their authorship except

the enigmatical initials O. O. They are by Mr. Charles Weldon; he is

still a young man, and the poems below, we have been told, are the

first that he wrote. Their niceties of rhythm in many cases would

reflect credit on the recognized masters of the poetic art. In this

respect they are remarkable; but perhaps their greatest charm is a

certain kind of subtle but masculine thought. They embody what most

men feel, but lack words to express; strange facts of impression and

consciousness, half-formed philosophies, and those glimpses of truth

which are revealed to the mind in certain moods, as stray rays of the

moon on a cloudy night. In this respect they resemble the best pieces

of Emerson, who seems to be a favorite with Mr. Weldon. In others they

remind us of the simplicity of "In Memoriam." By this we intend a

compliment rather than a charge of imitation. Mr. Weldon's thoughts

are too peculiar to come from any one but himself, and too original to

be cast in other moulds. We shall watch his progress with interest,

and are mistaken if he does not do something worthy to be long

remembered.

Mysterious interpreter,

Dear Aid that God has given to me!

Instruct me, for I meanly err;

Inform me, for I dimly see.

I know thee not: How can I know?--

I sought thee long, and lately found,

Wearing the sable weeds of wo,

A figure cast upon the ground.

_Thou_ wert that figure. Face to face

We have not stood: I dare not see

Thy features. We did once embrace,

And all my being went to thee.

Henceforward never more apart

We wander. All thy steps are mine.

Thou hast my brain: thou hast my heart:

Thou hast my soul. And I am thine.

...*...*...*...*

The Sun has his appointed place,

He never rests, and never tires;

And ever in serenest space

Burn the celestial, upper fires.

They shine into the soul of man--

Good works of God, but not the best--

And he adores them as he can,

Cherishing a supremer guest.

He does not know the alphabet

Of angel-language, who aspires

Against the sky his tube to set,

And spell them into worlds, those fires.

...*...*...*...*

The Petrel, bird of storms, is found

Five hundred leagues from any ground:

He dwells upon the ocean-wave;

He screams above the sailor's grave.

How many tens of centuries

Ere mankind built their theories,

Skimming the foamy tracks of whales,

Did he outride the stoutest gales,

Upon three thousand miles of sea

From land to land perpetually

Rolling; and not a wave could stay,

From day to night, from night to day,

Without an anthem? Where are gone

The anthem, and the sea-bird's moan?

Where is the splendor of the morn

That rose on seas, ere man was born?

Where are the roses of the years,

Ere Mother Eve knew mother's cares?

Where is the clang of Tubal-Cain's

First brass, and where are Jubal's strains?

Where is the rainbow Noah saw

And heard a law, or thought a law?

The rainbow fades, the beauty lives;

The creature falls, the race survives.

...*...*...*...*

They tell us that the brain is mind,

Or the mind enters through the brain,

Even as light that is confined

And colored by the window pane.

The act is fashioned by the head,

And thus man does or cannot do;

Through the red glass the light is red.

Through the blue glass the light is blue.

They do not urge their world-machine

To sounder progress, nor explain

The difficulties that were seen

And felt before--pray what _is_ brain?

All undiscoverable, how

Can they resolve the Whence or Why

Man grew to being in the Now,

Or what is his Futurity.

...*...*...*...*

Down the world's steep, dread abysmal,

Icy as Spitzbergen's coast,

Through the night hours, long and dismal,

Ghost is calling unto ghost;

Crushed is every fairer promise,

And the good is taken from us;

Sorrow adds to former sorrow,

And, with every new to-morrow,

Some expected joy is lost.

But I will not shrink nor murmur.

Though a spectre leads me on;

Now I set my footsteps firmer,

Face me now, thou skeleton!

Trance me with thy fleshless eyeholes--

But I move to other viols

Than the rattling of thy bones,

As we tread the crazy stones,

For I see the risen sun.

With my face behind my shadow

Thrown before the risen sun,

Life I follow o'er the meadow,

And an angel thrusts me on.

Every little flower below me

Seems to see me, seems to know me;

Every bird and cloud above me

Seems (or do I dream?) to love me,

While the Angel thrusts me on.

Where the turf is softest, greenest,

Does that Angel thrust me on;

Where the landscape lies serenest

In the journey of the sun.

I shall pass through golden portals

With him, to the wise Immortals,

And behold the saints and sages

Who outshone their several ages,

For an Angel thrust them on.

...*...*...*...*

The poem of the Universe

Nor rhythm has, nor rhyme;

Some god recites the wondrous song,

A stanza at a time.

Great deeds he is foredoomed to do,

With Freedom's flag unfurled,

Who hears the echo of that song,

As it goes down the world.

Great words he is compelled to speak,

Who understands the song;

He rises up like fifty men--

Fifty good men and strong.

A stanza for each century!

Now, heed it, all who can,

Who hears it, he, and only he,

Is the elected man.

...*...*...*...*

The frost upon the window pane

Makes crystal pictures in the night;

The Earth, old mother, wears again

Her garment of the shining white.

We fly across the frozen snow

With bounding blood that will not pause.

Oh Heaven! we are far below--

Oh Earth! above thee, with thy laws.

The happy horses toss their bells;

The sleigh goes on into the far

And far away. (A whisper tells

Of flight to where the angels are.)

Glide forward. As a star that slips

Through space, we know a large desire;

And though our steeds are urged by whips,

We haste as they were urged by fire.

Dash forward, Let us know no rest--

But on, and on, and ever on,

Until the palace of the West

We enter, with the sinking sun.

And forward still, until the East

Releases the aspiring day;

And forward till the hours have ceased,

Oh Earth! now art thou far away.

...*...*...*...*

The mountains truly have a glorious roughness;

I do not hear the pyramids are smooth;

The ocean grandly foams into abruptness;

Does God peal thunder down a well-oiled groove?

Thou, with a poet's roughness, friend, would'st quarrel;

Staggering o'er the ridges of ploughed speech,

You move uneasily. Well, the apparel

Of verse is trivial. Try the sense to reach.

THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[7]

TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF

H. DE ST. GEORGES.

XX.--THE GOOD AND THE BAD ANGEL.

The Count of Monte-Leone was cast down on receiving from the minister

an order to leave France. So many interests bound him to his country;

not that he cherished still the hope of being loved by Aminta, and of

one day giving her his name. His ruin had dissipated all his bright

dreams of future happiness. But he resided in the same place as the

marquise; he breathed the same air that she breathed. To live near her

thus, without seeing her, without telling her of that love which

consumed his soul, was indeed cruel--it was a bitter sorrow to him

every hour and every moment. But to remove himself from her and France

was to die. And then, his political work--that work, his life and

glory--that work which he loved because it avenged him of kings in

avenging his father, the victim of a king--in which he believed he saw

the regeneration of the world--that great work, in fine, of which the

confidence of almost all the _Ventes_ of Europe rendered him in some

way the master and arbiter--it was necessary to renounce at the very

moment of accomplishment. He must abandon his associates, his

brothers, who relied in the hour of danger on his devotion and energy,

and on the firm and bold will with which he had often controlled

chance, and by which he had produced safety from apparent shipwreck.

Had the Count been denounced? was the plan for the completion of which

he and his friends toiled known? He told Taddeo, Von Apsbery, and

d'Harcourt, of the order he had received, and they had consulted about

it. Their plans, as it will be seen, though difficult, were

susceptible of penetration. The house of the false Matheus as yet

appeared unsuspected, and that was a great point. It was the holy ark

in which were deposited the archives of the association, and the names

of the agents, and if it were violated, all was lost. The expulsion

from France of the Count might be the signal of the persecutions about

to be begun against Carbonarism. At once, by means of a spontaneity

which was one of the characteristics of the association, all the

_Vente_ of Paris were informed of the measures adopted against Count

Monte-Leone. The mighty serpent then coiled up its innumerable rings

and then its federal union apparently ceased in the whole capital. The

orders were transmitted, received, and executed the very night after

the decree of the minister had been signified to Monte-Leone. The

friends during the night could not fancy why the order had been given.

Monte-Leone seemed, as it were, struck by a new idea and said:

"Perhaps it has no political motive, but has been dictated by private

vengeance." He then paused, for he saw Taddeo's eyes fixed on him. He

continued--"I have a few hours left to ascertain it, and will do so,

not for my own sake, for whatever motive it may have, it will not

trouble me less, but for your sake, my friends, who will remain here

to defend the breach and to receive the enemy's attack."

It was then resolved that up to the time of Monte-Leone's departure,

he should not again visit Matheus's house, nor receive the adieus of

his friends even at his hotel. All this took place on the night after

the interview of the stranger and M. H----, and on the day Louis

XVIII. received the visit of the Prince de Maulear. In relation to

private revenge the Count could think of no one except the beautiful

and passionate Duchess of Palma, who had loved him so devotedly that

she wished even to die for him. This passionate woman he had driven to

despair. For some time, though, calmness and resignation seemed to

occupy her once desolate heart. The Count rarely visited her, but

occasionally went to her hotel. Every time he did so, he found her

more reasonable and calm. The Duchess evidently avoided all allusion

to their old relations. She inquired calmly after his affairs, his

pleasures, and his friends. When her mind recurred to the past, as a

skiff drifts towards the river it has left, an effort of will was

required again to push it into the wide stream of worldliness and

indifference. The Count, however, was a delicate and acute observer,

and sounded the abyss of her mind through the flowers which grew

across its brink. The Count then went to his hotel at the _Champs

Elysees_, to clear up his suspicions, and to ascertain if his

expulsion had not been caused by the Duchess of Palma. Monte-Leone was

ushered in and found her with a few visitors. The features of the

Duchess evidently became flushed at the sound of Monte-Leone's name.

This, however, was but a flash of light in the dark, and the pale and

beautiful face of La Felina soon became cold and passionless. "I

expected you, Signor," said she, "when I learned from the Duke the

unpleasant event which has occurred. I did not think you would leave

the city without seeing me."

"Signora," said the Count, "you were right. But you are mistaken in

calling the terrible blow, the almost humiliating attack to which I

have been subjected, a disagreeable event."

"Certainly," said La Felina, "it is a catastrophe, and I can

understand how severe it must be. We will talk of it by and by,

however, when we are _alone_."

The last words of the Duchess were a dismissal to those in the room,

and a few moments after they left. When the ambassadress had seen the

last visitor leave, she rang the bell by her side. A footman came, to

whom she said, "Remember I am at home to no one, not even to the Duke,

if he take it into his head to ask for me. Now," said she to the

Count, who was surprised at the precautions she had taken, "we are now

alone, and can talk together safely. You tell me you are ordered to

leave France?"

"At once, without the assignment of any reason."

"Have you not seen the Minister and asked an explanation?"

"I did not think it dignified to do so. Besides, my legal protector in

France, the Duke of Palma, the Neapolitan ambassador, alone can defend

me. I am, too, unwilling to ask justice, even, far less a favor, from

his excellency."

"You are right," said the Duchess. "You would not have been

successful, for at the instance of the Duke himself have you been

ordered away."

The reply of the Duchess was clear and precise. The Count had every

reason to suspect she had participated in the affair, but wished to be

sure of it.

"And has not the Duchess discovered why the Duke has done so?"

"Certainly," said La Felina. "The Duke has little confidence in me,

not deigning to initiate me in the mysteries of diplomacy. This is not

the case, though, with the secretaries. Now," said she kindly, "you

must know that nothing which relates to you is uninteresting and I

therefore sought to discover why such a stern course had been

adopted."

"Indeed."

"Your Neapolitan enemies, or perhaps your _friends_, have caused this.

The court of Naples had, by means of the Duke of Palma, pointed you

out to that of France as maintaining communications with Italy, which

endangered the peace of the country. You are accused of being engaged

in a plot to control from Paris the insurrectionary movements of the

two Sicilies. You may," said she, "be innocent of those crimes, but

you have left terrible recollections behind you in Naples, and your

name will long continue a standard of revolt and sedition."

"The court of Naples," said the Count, "does me honor by believing me

thus powerful and formidable. I do not see, however, the use of

bringing so dangerous a person to Italy."

The Duchess said, "At home, it will be able to watch you more closely

than at a distance. I trust, however, we will be able to defeat their

plans and keep you here."

"What say you?" said the Count.

"I say that I am willing to abandon many schemes, but will not be

diverted from being useful to you--from defending you against your

enemies--nor cease to be what I once was, a secret providence, an AEgis

against danger. You know I learned this long ago, and am happy to be

again able to assume the part."

The Count did not know what to think, and his face expressed doubt and

incredulity.

"Well, well," said she bitterly, "you suspect, you doubt me, and do

not think me generous enough to return good for evil. So be it; judge

me by my actions rather than my words. The former will soon convince

you of my devotion."

"What devotion, Signora, do you speak of?" said the Count with

curiosity.

"Plainly speaking, of the most sublime of all devotion--of making you

happy at the expense of myself. I wish to retain you here in France,

where the happiness of which I speak exists, to keep you by her who

loves you and by whom you are loved."

"What say you?" said the Count, "would you do so?"

"I will try," said Felina. "I have been forced to adopt strange and

extreme means," added she, with a smile. "You know serious cases

require violent remedies, and I had no choice."

"Felina," said the Count, with emotion, "I have just committed an

offence against you, for which I blush, and which my frankness alone

can excuse. When you were busy in my behalf I fancied you the cause of

my troubles."

"That is very natural, and I am not at all surprised," said the

Duchess. "People in this world are not apt to repay evil with good. I,

however, do not wish to appear to you to be better than I am. Perhaps

I am less deserving than you think. Time, it is said, cures the

greatest mortifications, and dissipates the deepest passions. Three

months ago I did not think it possible that I could have acted thus on

your behalf. Then I was but a poor despised woman, passionate and

deserted. Now I am your friend, sincere and devoted."

"You are an angel," said the Count, with a deep transport of

gratitude.

"An angel," said the Duchess. "Then there are only good angels. But,"

continued she, as if she were unwilling to suffer the Count to think

on what she had said, "let us descend from heaven, where you give me

so excellent a resting place, to earth. Speak to me of your plans and

of her you love."

"Of her I love!" said the Count, with hesitation.

"Certainly; have not all your old hopes returned? Has not the death of

the Marquis revived your old passion?"

"Felina," said the Count, "should I talk to you of such matters?"

"Why not? am I not the first to mention them? You must, from my

_sang-froid_, see that I can now listen to your confessions and hear

all your tender sentiments. The French proverb says: _'Il n'y a que le

premier pas qui coute_;'[8] I have already taken that. Treat me as a

sister, but as a sister you love, and let me at least have the

satisfaction of knowing that my self-denial has made you happy."

"Happy!" said the Count, relapsing into sad thoughts, "may I always be

happy, as you seem to wish me! I do not know that I may not hope some

day for her to share my fate. She once refused my hand. I do not know

but that her heart at last listens to mine; but that which Count

Monte-Leone, amid all his luxury, once could offer, the poor and

exiled Italian does not now propose."

"Really," said Felina, "I am predestined to make you happy. By a

single word I am about to dissipate the clouds around you, and light

up your brow and heart with joy."

"That is impossible," said the Count. "I henceforth have nothing, and

have lost even hope."

"The present," said the Duchess, "is less sombre than you think it.

You are yet rich, almost as you ever were."

The features of the Count expressed the greatest astonishment.

"Listen to me," said the Duchess. "Yesterday one of my Neapolitan

friends came to see me. He spoke of you, and I did not conceal the

interest with which you had inspired me. He told me he had a

confidential letter for Count Monte-Leone from his banker, Antonio

Lamberti. The man is not so bad as he is thought to be; for, forced to

give way before the burden of his obligations, he only pretended to

fail. United by friendship, and especially by political opinions, with

you, he has saved your fortune, and will send you the income until he

can arrange his affairs and send you the capital."

"Can this be true?" said the Count, beside himself.

"All this can be effected only on certain conditions, that you will

answer the letter of Lamberti, which now should be at your hotel."

Monte-Leone could not repress his joy. "Rich," said he; "yet rich!

Fortune has now its value for _her_ sake."

Scarcely had he uttered the last word when the face of the Duchess

changed its expression. Her eyes glared with madness, and a mortal

pallor covered her face.

"Excuse me," said the Count, as he saw this change. This was however

but a flash, and by her powerful self-control Mme. de Palma became

calm and smiling. She said "convalescents sometimes have relapses.

Time is indispensable for a radical cure. The storm has passed, and

the old nature reappears but for a moment, and gives place to the new

but true friend, who rejoices with you at your unanticipated good

fortune. It will secure your happiness."

"My friend," added she, reaching out her hand to Monte-Leone, "you

must be impatient to ascertain if what I have said is true. Go home,

and you will find my prediction correct."

"Felina," said the Count, "if your hopes are not realized, if you be

not again my good star, I shall not be less grateful to you."

"Gratitude is cold, indeed," said Felina. "I ask your friendship."

"It is all yours," said the Count.

"Well, go now," said the Duchess, with a smile.

She was right, for when he reached his hotel, his old and faithful

Giacomo, who, since his master's misfortune, had discharged his

servants, and now performed all his functions, with the addition of

those of valet, factotum, and cook, was busy with preparations for the

departure of Monte-Leone. The old man gave him a letter, saying that

it had been brought during his absence. The Count opened it, and read

as follows:

"COUNT MONTE-LEONE: You will lose nothing by Antonio Lamberti. He is

not a person to destroy one of our great association. You will find

within a check for fifty thousand livres, drawn in your favor by one

of the first houses in Naples, on the house of Casimer Perier of

Paris. This is the interest at five per cent. on the million deposited

by you with Antonio Lamberti. Every year the same sum will be paid

down, and before six months you will receive security for your

principal. One condition only is interposed on the return of your

fortune. This is indispensable--that you maintain the most profound

secrecy in relation to your new resources, and attribute them to any

other than the real cause. The least indiscretion on your part will

awake attention in relation to means employed to save from the wreck

of Antonio Lamberti your own fortune."

This letter was signed, _A Brother of the Venta of Castel-a-Mare_.

Count Monte-Leone, though master of himself in adversity, could not

repress his joy as he read this saving letter. As he had said at the

house of La Felina, it was not for himself but for another that he

rejoiced at this return of prosperity.

"A fine time, indeed, to be laughing," said Giacomo, ill-tempered as

possible, "when we are being driven from the country as if we were

spotted with plague. Only think, a Monte-Leone expelled, when his

ancestor, Andrea Monte-Leone, Viceroy of Sicily, received royal honors

in every town he passed through. You, however, have no shame. No,

Signor," added he, as he saw Monte-Leone smiling. "Had I been in your

place, I would have picked a quarrel and killed the damned minister

who has forced us to resume our wandering gipsy life. Besides we are

ruined gipsies. At my age to begin my wanderings, to be badly lodged,

badly fed, like the servant of a pedler. If I were only twenty I would

undertake a game of dagger-play with my minister."

"That is very fine, Giacomo," said Monte-Leone, "but the dagger is not

the fashion in France. As for your apprehensions of the future, you

may get rid of them by leaving me."

The wrath of the old man disappeared at these words of his master, and

great tears streamed down his furrowed cheeks.

"Leave you! I leave you, when you are lost and ruined, Count?" said

the good man. "Your father would not have spoken thus to me."

"Come, come, old boy, you know well enough I cannot get on without

you. If you did not scold me every day, if you did not bark

everlastingly at me, like those old servants to whom age gives

impunity--if I did not hear every morning and night your magisterial

reprimands, I would have fancied I missed some luxury. Be easy,

however, Giacomo. You saw me happy just now because my sky began to

grow bright, because our fortune is about to change, because we are

nearer good fortune than you thought."

Full of these happy ideas, and anxious to take advantage of the few

hours yet under his control, in case his departure should be enforced,

the Count went to the hotel of the Prince. His heart beat violently

when he was shown into the saloon of the Marquise, and he was glad

that her not being in the room enabled him to repress his agitation.

Aminta came in soon after. When Monte-Leone was announced, she felt

almost as he had done.

She spoke first, but with a voice full of agitation. "We had almost

despaired of seeing you, Count, for the Prince told me you were about

to go. You have however neglected us for so long a time that we knew

not whether we might expect you to bid us adieu."

The fact was, that since the news of his ruin the Count had not called

to see Aminta. He felt that every interview made his departure more

painful and the wreck of his hopes more terrible.

"Madame," said he, without replying immediately to her kind reproach,

"you are not mistaken, for an exile comes to bid you farewell. That

exile, however, will bear away a perpetual memory of your kindness."

"You will see _our_ country," said the Marquise, with an effort.

"I shall see my country, but not that which made it dear to me."

"You will find many friends there," said the Marquise, becoming more

and more troubled.

"Friends are like swallows, Signora, they love the summer, but leave

when winter comes."

"You must have thought the Prince and myself were like them," said

Aminta, "and that winter was come. You have not been for a long time

to see us."

"Ah, Signora, had I known--had I guessed--such a sympathy would have

made me wish for misfortune."

"No, Count, not so. It should, however, aid you to bear it."

"There are misfortunes," said the Count, "which often disturb the

strongest mind and destroy the greatest courage."

"Ah, Signor, should the loss of a fortune cause such regret?"

"But what if the loss of fortune," continued the Count, "involved that

of the only blessing dreamed of--if this loss deprived you even of the

right to be happy--then, Signora, do you understand, what would be the

effect of such a loss?"

The future fate of the Count was thus exhibited to Aminta. She saw at

once that this noble and energetic man, born to command, must be

proscribed, wandering, and wretched. The idea was too much for her

heart, already crushed by the idea of a separation which became every

moment more painful to her, and she therefore formed in her mind a

generous resolution.

"Signor," said she, "there are hearts which are attracted rather than

alienated by misfortune, and sentiments which they would conceal from

the happy, they confess to those who suffer."

Monte-Leone, perfectly overcome, fell at the Marquise's feet. He was

about to confess the unexpected good fortune which had befallen him.

He, however, forgot all, and covered the hand which the Marquise

abandoned to him with kisses. The Prince de Maulear entered, and

appeared surprised but not offended by what he saw. "Do not disturb

yourself, dear Count,--I know the meaning of all that, and expected

it. But if, however, you are making an exhibition of your despair and

misery, you have lost your time; for you will not go. The King places

a high estimate on you, and will not forget you. He told me so."

XXI.--THE SECRET PANEL.

Three hours after the revelation made to M. H---- by his mysterious

visitor in the cabinet of the chief of the political police, a man

about fifty years of age rang at the door of a room on the second

story of a furnished house in Jacob-street. He looked like a

substantial citizen with a property of fifty thousand francs--or an

income of 2,500 francs at five per cent. The mulberry frock of this

man, over a vest of yellow silk, spotted with snuff, and a cravat of

white mousseline, with gloves of sea-green, and pantaloons of brown

cloth twisted like a cork-screw around his legs, an ivory-headed cane,

and all the _et cetera_, might appropriately belong to a shopkeeper,

retired from business, living in some _thebaide_ of the streets

d'Enfer or Vaugirard, and sustaining their intellects by the leaders

of "The White Flag" of Martainville, and by witnessing once a year

some chef-d'oeuvre of Picard at the Odeon.

We will make no conjectures about the social position of this

gentleman,--he will hereafter explain himself. Almost before the bell

he rang had ceased to sound, the door was opened by another person.

The latter was tall, dark and athletic, so that we would really have

taken him for the lover of Mlle. Celestine Crepineau, had he worn the

magnificent moustache and voluminous whiskers of the bear-hunter,

which the lady admired so much. His costume, too, was different from

that of the Spaniard. He wore a blue frock over his chest, at the

bottom hole of which was a bit of red ribbon, not a little discolored.

"Ah! M. Morisseau," said the inmate of the room, "you are welcome, but

late. The dinner is cold. And," added he in a low tone, "the dinner of

_a brigand of the Loire_, as they call such fragments of the imperial

guard as myself, must be hot, it being too small to eat in any other

way."

"I think it always excellent, Monsieur _Rhinoceros_," said Morisseau.

"Permit me," said the brigand of the Loire,--for so the man called

himself--"My name is not Rhinoceros. A certain African animal has that

beautiful name, as I have often told you during the many games of

_dominoes_ we have played together at the _Cafe Lemblin_, whither you

are attracted by my company. My name is _Rinoccio--Paolo Rinoccio_,

born in Corsica, as my foreign accent tells you. I am the countryman

of _him_." He made a military salute. "I served ten years beneath the

Eagles. You, too, adore our Emperor. Each Buonapartist has a hand for

his brother," continued he, shaking that of Morisseau. "Already

thinking alike, eight days ago, over M. Lemblin's cognac, we swore

eternal friendship. You, therefore, deigned to visit the warrior in

his tent, in Jacob-street, to share the bread and soup of the soldier,

and drink to the return of _him_ of Austerlitz."

"M. Rhinoceros,--no, no, Rhino,--damn the name," said the Corsican's

guest, "it is indeed an honor for me to sit at the table of so brave a

man--for that reason, I accepted your invitation."

"Sit down, then, and let us drink to the health of the little

corporal."

As he spoke he filled two glasses and emptied his own. M. Morisseau

simply moistened his lips. "The Emperor," he said, on receiving his

part of the soup, "the Emperor, M. Rhino, was my god."

"And that of France," said the Corsican.

"He was my god and my best customer; I had the honor to be his

furrier."

"His what?"

"His furrier. I furnished his majesty's robes--not only his own, but

those of all the kings he made. You know the Emperor used to make a

king a year, and he used to insist that all his brothers and friends

should reign only in my robes. I had the honor, therefore, of wrapping

up the august forms of Kings Louis, Joseph, Jerome, Bernadotte and

Murat, without particularizing the sovereign princes, grand dukes, and

grand judges, who to please _him_ dealt with me."

"To _his_ health," said the Corsican, and he emptied the second glass.

"You never served, Monsieur Morisseau?"

"Yes," said the furrier, "I marched beneath the imperial eagles. I

belonged to the glorious army of the _Sambre_ and _Meuse_. I even now

suffer in my _femur_."

"From a ball?"

"No, from the rheumatism, contracted during a forced march during the

winter of '93. Having been surprised during the night by the enemy, I

had not time to dress myself comfortably, and was compelled to march

fifteen leagues barefooted, and in my drawers. That, by the bye, was

the usual uniform of our army. Those who were best dressed only wore

shoes and pantaloons. To dress thus, though, something more than our

pay was necessary, which we never got."

"You were then discharged?"

"Yes, for my rheumatism became very severe. But for it I might now be

a general. I asked a pension as having been wounded in service. It

was, however, refused me--a great injustice."

"The soup is gone. It is a very indigestible food, and we must

therefore attack the enemy in his strong-holds. Two glasses of vin de

Beaume will settle him."

"But," said Morisseau, as he saw his host filling up his glass, "my

head is very weak, and I have not gotten drunk since I left the

service."

"So be it, dear Morisseau. I will go for the second service, which the

restorateur leaves in the kitchen. Excuse my having no servant, but

two old soldiers like us can do without attendants."

Rinoccio went into the next room. When Morisseau was alone he took a

little vial from his pocket, opened it, and poured a few drops into

the Corsican's glass, the third portion of the contents of which he

had swallowed. Scarcely had he replaced the vial when the Corsican

entered, having a plate on which were two large pork chops, with a

gravy of _cornichons_. "The second entry will make a man drink like a

fish," said the Corsican.

"Let us drink, then," said Morisseau, knocking his glass against his

host's.

"Let us drink," said the latter; and Morisseau's eyes glared as he saw

him bear the glass to his lips. His joy, however, was short. "Let us

drink something better than this," said the Corsican, who, as he

spoke, threw away the contents of his glass. "I have some champagne

given me by my General, one of the old guard, and I shall never find a

more suitable occasion to uncork it." He took from a shelf near the

table a long wire-fastened bottle, covered with a venerable dust.

Morisseau was not yet in despair, for he relied for an opportunity to

use his vial on the third service. Paolo dexterously uncorked the

bottle, and poured out a glass of perfumed wine to the imperial

furrier, who, when he had knocked his glass against the Corsican's,

drank it down, while the latter, just when he got it to his mouth, saw

a fragment of cork on its brim. He took it out with his knife, lifted

up the glass, and said: "To the Emperor. May he whom the enemies call

the Corsican Ogre, soon eat up the Prussians, Austrians, and beggarly

Cossacks. May he cut them into cat's-meat. May he cut off the _ailles

de Pigeon_ of all the _Voltigeurs de Louis XVI._ restored by the

Bourbons. May he--"

Rinoccio paused in his speech, for his guest looked pale and

disturbed, and seemed about to go to sleep.

"_Per Bacco!_" said M. Morisseau, at once speaking the purest Italian,

"what did that devil give me to drink?"

"Probably," said the Corsican, in the same tongue, "what you would

have given me, had I not taken care to empty in the fireplace the

glass into which you had poured some narcotic or other."

"Christ!" said the furrier, "the beggar saw me!"

"Perfectly, Signor Pignana."

"He knows me," said the false furrier, attempting to rise.

The Corsican, however, pushed him back, and Pignana sank stupidly on

his seat.

"Curse you, Stenio, you shall pay for this!..."

"Ah, ah," said the Corsican, "so two played at the same game. Funny!

and we were both good actors. I do not ask you," continued he,

ironically, "why you came hither, and why you consented to share my

frugal meal, for I know already, and will tell you. You met me in

Paris, my presence annoyed you and your friends, and I know why. You

watched and pursued me to find where I lived, and you succeeded. You

joined me at the Cafe Lemblin, and we neither seemed to recognize each

other. I asked you to dine, and you accepted my invitation, for with

the drug you have you intended to put me to sleep, and expected then

to be able to examine all my plans. You would have failed, Signor

Pignana, for I do not live in this house. I took this room only for

your especial benefit, and intend to give it up to-morrow. Do not,

therefore, be disturbed, my good fellow; but go to sleep, and digest

your dinner."

"But I will not go to sleep," said Signor Pignana, attempting again to

rise, "I will not go to sleep here, in the house of a man I think

capable of any thing."

"Not exactly that," said the Corsican, "but I am capable of much."

"What do you wish to do with me?" said Pignana, articulating with

great pain, for his tongue began to grow heavy and his ideas confused.

"That you must not know; but do not be afraid, your life and health

being dear to me. I would not deprive the Carbonari of so skilful an

agent, who is so daring and prudent as you are. Lest, however, you

should be uneasy and your sleep be troubled, I will tell you what I

mean, and you will yourself admire my plan."

Half stupid with sleep and terror, Pignana glared at Stenio Salvatori.

"Here," said he, lifting up Pignana from the floor and placing him on

a kind of sofa, "lie there, and then you can both sleep better and

hear me more at your ease. You will for twelve hours have the most

pleasant dreams imaginable. A glass will make you sleep twelve

hours--a bottle for eternity." Pignana made a gesture expressive of

the greatest terror. "Do not be so uneasy," said Stenio, "and remember

you have had only a glass. To-morrow, at six o'clock, you will wake

up, with a slight headache, but in other respects perfectly well. Then

the master of the house will come to ask after you. If you are

generous, you will give him something to drink your health. Otherwise

you will thank him and go, for all has been paid for. You see I do

things genteelly, and know how to receive my friends. You will then

leave this house, and go about your usual business, and will never

mention this matter."

"Eh? who will prevent me?" muttered Pignana.

"Oh, you will take care not to do so. For if you own that you have

been duped, your confederates will think you a fool, and dismiss you

without wages. Now this would be bad--just on the eve of their

success. If you tell them how long you have slept, they will think you

an idiot, for I never saw any one take to champagne so kindly as you

did just now, my dear Pignana. Now, adieu, for I must go. Be still,"

said he, pushing Pignana down with all his strength. "No, no, do not

take the trouble to go with me--you are too kind. Go to sleep, go to

sleep, go to sleep, my dear fellow." He left the room, and sleep took

possession of its prey. Pignana felt his ideas grow gradually more

confused, and his real life pass away. A few minutes after Stenio's

departure, M. Pignana was sound asleep. Stenio then slowly opened the

door of the room, and glided like a shadow over the floor to the

sleeper, into whose pockets he placed his hand. "Nothing here--not

here. The devil, can it be that it is not about him!" A smile of

triumph, however, soon appeared on his lips, for he had found what he

wanted. He discovered a kind of pocket in the waistcoat of the false

tradesman, and felt in it. "Here it is!" said he. Pignana moved.

Stenio paused, and then took from the sleeper's pocket a door-key. He

then left, and did not return....

While the events recorded above were transpiring, about eight o'clock

on the evening, in Jacob-street, Mlle. Celestine Crepineau waited as

Desdemona might have done for Othello, singing the melancholy romance

of "The Willow." This was to console her for the prolonged absence of

the bear-hunter, who had not been during the whole day in her lodge.

The finger of Celestine furtively wiped away the tears which dripped

down her long aquiline nose. Hope now and then arose in her heart, but

that hope was betrayed. A man with a stern voice asked for Dr.

Matheus, and went to his room. Seven times hope was enkindled in her

heart only to be disappointed. She became angry, and as she could not

confess to that passion in relation to the bear-hunter, and must have

some pretext, she vented her temper on the Doctor's visitors. "How

soon will this be over?" said she. "All Paris has come this evening to

see my handsome lodger. What brings all these _savans_ hither? They

will keep me awake until late hours, and then Mr. Nunez will say

maliciously in the morning, 'Your eyes, Mlle. Celestine, are very

heavy this morning. What have you been dreaming?' Then he will take

liberties altogether inconvenient to a person of my sex."

The seven blows on the knocker had announced the union of eight

persons, including Von Apsberg, in the ground-floor parlor, the

apartment through which the unfortunate Pignana used to go and come.

Two of the Doctor's friends were d'Harcourt and Taddeo Rovero. The

others we will tell by and by.

"Gentlemen," said Von Apsberg, when they were in council, "our meeting

should, as usual, be presided over by Count Monte-Leone. Since,

however, the order of expulsion, of which he was notified and which

almost immediately was revoked, for some unknown reason, it seemed

best that he should not be present. Monte-Leone is the head of the

great brotherhood of Carbonarism. We therefore propose to render a

succinct account of its situation in Europe, and particularly in

France. Its position is peculiar, and we cannot deny that its

existence is threatened on all sides. Secret and shrewd spies have

penetrated in Germany the secret labors of our three societies, _The

Tugenbund_ at Berlin, _The Burschenschaft_ and _The Teutonia_ at

Vienna and Leipsic. Their chiefs, Johan and Plischer, have been

arrested."

"Death to spies!" said Matheus's seven hearers.

"This is not all," continued Matheus. "The plans of Count Labisbel

have failed in Spain, and the Italian _vente_ have been discovered by

a shrewd police. The prisons of Naples, Venice, and Milan are already

filled with our brethren."

There was consternation on every face.

"We are assured," said Matheus, "that the informations on which these

arrests have been made have come from Paris. Now, this information

could only have been obtained from our secret papers, as we alone in

France correspond with the supreme venta of Europe. To these papers

none have access but four brothers, Monte-Leone, Rovero, d'Harcourt,

and myself. We inform you of these facts in obedience to our articles

of association, that you may place us four on trial."

These words were uttered with deep excitement. The three persons

present of the four mentioned by Von Apsberg sat still, and the others

rose.

"On my honor and conscience," said General A----, "I declare that such

an idea is unworthy of you and us." The banker F----, Count de Ch----,

a Peer of France, Ober the merchant, the lawyer B----, and professor

C----, said the same. They then gave their hands affectionately to the

three friends, who acknowledged their salute.

"Let the denunciation come whence it may, our brothers yet are victims

of it. They suffer for us," said Taddeo, "and we will act for them."

"Yes," said Von Apsberg, "we will act, and decidedly, for time presses

us, and we must anticipate our enemies unless we would be anticipated.

Let all opinions centre, then, without hesitation, on the one

principle which is the basis and keystone of Carbonarism, viz., '_That

might is not right--that the kings of Europe reign either by virtue of

a convention or by virtue of arms. The Bourbons in France reign by

virtue of the allied sovereigns. We therefore declare that the

Carbonari have associated to restore to all the nations of the

continent, and to France especially, the free exercise of the right to

choose the government which suits them best. We all swear to maintain

this principle!_"

"We swear," said the Carbonari.

"Gentlemen," said Von Apsberg, "the time of action will be fixed by

Count Monte-Leone at a meeting to take place January 25th, 1820, in

the masonic lodge of _The Friends of Truth_. Until then let each one

individually contribute to do all he can towards the reconstruction of

our new edifice from the ruins of the old."

"I take charge of the army," said General A----, "the regiments in

garrison at Befort are ours, and the others will follow their

example."

"I take charge of the colleges," said professor C----.

The lawyer B---- said, "We have many friends in the bar."

Count Ch---- said, "And in the chamber of peers."

The banker F---- added, "There will be no scarcity of money."

The last who spoke was the merchant Ober, who said, "The influence of

trade is on our side."

Von Apsberg said, "We will not meet again till the twenty-fifth of

January, 1820. The supreme _vente_, composed of the Count, Rovero, the

Viscount, and myself, will communicate only with the five central

_ventas_ of Paris, the representative of which you are. Be active,

then, in the _ventas_ which depend on you, members of which are

ignorant of your identity. Make yourself known to but one member of

each venta, and communicate with Count Monte-Leone only in that

brilliant society to which the high position of him and of yourselves

gives access, and where the government will least suspect the

existence of treason. Confide the rolls of our ventas, and of our new

associates to him alone, for it is his duty to deposit them among our

archives. Now, brethren of right and duty, confide alone in

Monte-Leone, the soul of honor and of prudence. To all others, silence

or death."

"Silence or death," repeated his seven associates, and their voices

sounded like the chorus of a solemn hymn....

A few minutes after the room was deserted. The Carbonari had gone, and

Matheus returned to his laboratory. The door of the library was then

opened gently, and two men were seen concealed behind the secret

panel. They were H----, the chief of the political police, and the

bear-hunter, the brigand of the Loire, or Stenio Salvatori.

"I have them," said M. H----.

"Not yet," said Stenio, "but thanks to our associate, Count

Monte-Leone, by whose aid I have brought you hither...."

The door was shut without noise....

The next day, when he awoke, Pignana found the key of the room in his

pocket.

BOOK II.

PART II.--I. CLOUDS IN THE HORIZON.

A month had rolled by since the Carbonari had met at the house of Von

Apsberg. They were as prudent as possible. There was no meeting of the

members of this vast society, yet such were the advantages of its

mechanism, that communication and intercourse was never interrupted

for a day. All action emanated from the high _venta_, which was known

only to the presidents of the seven central ventas, through whom its

instructions were communicated by means of _agents_ to the secondary

ventas; a few men where thus enabled to discipline ten thousand. Count

Monte-Leone was the soul of all this enterprise, and on him all the

threads of this huge net united. The Count, the invisible providence

of this invisible world, alone could give it external life and utter

the _fiat lux_ of eternity. More pleasant and delightful ideas had

possession of the Count. The future occupied him with a force and

intensity he thought most contradictory to his political duties. Since

Aminta had unveiled her heart to him, she had, as it were, returned to

her usual bearing. The life of Monte-Leone, though, was entirely

changed. The happiness he had long desired was about to dawn on him.

In a few months he would be the husband of that Aminta he had so much

loved and so regretted. The Count was received almost as a son by the

Prince, and as a husband by Aminta. Taddeo looked on him entirely as a

brother, and began to realize the happiest dream of his life--the

marriage he had so desired. Gladly availing himself of the liberty

accorded him, of coming familiarly to the hotel of the Prince de

Maulear, the Count was perfectly happy. He passed the whole day there,

and when night came mingled most unwillingly with society. The order

of expulsion which he had received, and which had been so mysteriously

revoked, added to the interest which had been entertained for him by

all Paris. The opposition was especially attentive to him, for he was

esteemed a decided enemy of the French Government, and of all

monarchies. This ostracism which he had escaped, attracted the

attention to him, for which the people of Paris were already prepared,

by the history of his Neapolitan adventures. In 1850 he would have

been called the lion of the day, and the greatest curiosity would have

been paid to all his adventures. So great was the attention excited by

the account of Monte-Leone's loss of fortune, that people were

surprised to see him resume his usual mode of life, keep possession of

his hotel, indulge in the same expenses of carriages, attendants, etc.

He altered nothing, not even the luxury of his house, from what had

been its condition before the papers and he himself had announced that

the failure of Lamberti made him entirely poor, and forced him to sell

his diamonds and other personal property to be able to live, as

cheaply as possible.

The Count, who had been forced to conceal the manner in which his

property had been restored, told his friends, Taddeo, d'Harcourt and

Von Apsberg, that certain important funds had been recovered from the

general wreck; and they, delighted with his good fortune, did not fail

to congratulate him. The world was more curious; the enemies of the

Count especially, who were ultra-monarchists, were numerous, active,

and malicious. They wrote to Naples, and ascertained that the ruin of

Monte-Leone was total, acquiring also certainty that he had no funds

in any European bank, and no property. They therefore made an outcry

of astonishment when they saw all the external appearance of opulence

in the possession of one they knew without the means of so splendid

and imposing an establishment. The Count knew nothing of this, and

continued his old life. It is, all know, true that rumors of this kind

reach their object last of all, when they are calculated to be

injurious.

One of the dominant ideas which actuated us in the preparation of this

history, we can here dwell upon, and we ask leave to do so briefly.

There exists in French society, polished and elegant as it is, a

hideous monster known to all, though no one disturbs it. Its ravages

are great; almost incalculable. It saps reputations, poisons,

dishonors, and defiles the splendor of the most estimable fame. This

minotaurus, which devours so many innocent persons, is especially

fearful, because its blows are terrible. It presents itself under the

mildest and gentlest forms, and is received every where in the city.

We find it in our rooms, in the interior of our families, in the

palaces of the opulent, and the garrets of the poor. It has no name,

being a mere figure of speech, a very word. It is composed of but one

phrase, and is called--THEY SAY. "Do you know such a one?" is often

asked, and the person is pointed out.

"_No_; but they say his morals are very bad. He has had strange

adventures, and his family is very unhappy."

"Are you sure?"

"No, I know nothing about it. But they say so."

"This young woman, so beautiful, so brilliant, so much admired--Do you

know her?"

"No. _They say_ that it is not difficult to please her, and that more

than one has done so."

"But she appears so decent, so reserved."

"Certainly; but _they say_----"

"Do not trust that gentleman who has such credit and is thought so

rich. Be on your guard--"

"Bah! his fortune is immense: see what an establishment he has."

"Yes! But _they say_ he is very much involved."

"Do you know the fact?"

"Not I. _They say_ though--"

This _they say_ is heard in every relation of life. It is deadly

mortal, and not to be grasped. It goes hither and thither, strikes and

kills manly honor, female virtue, without either sex being ever

conscious of the injury done. Each as he reads these lines will

remember cases illustrating the truth of what we say. The Count

suffered from the influence of the evil we mention; and as all were

ignorant whence his fortune came, each one adopted a thousand

conjectures and suspicions, which, as is always the case, were most

malicious. This is the way of the world. Now the consequences of this

_they say_ are plain. By its means they had dared to attack a

reputation which hitherto had been considered unassailable. This _they

say_ came in the end. The Marquise de Maulear was the only person who

knew whence came the resources of Monte-Leone; and after he had

confided to her, the charming woman had said, "It was very wrong in

you not to tell me previously of your good fortune. For instance, when

I thought you a fugitive and ruined, I suffered you to read my heart.

Had you told me this before, you would not have seen within it."

"Do not make me regret my misery which procured me such exquisite

pleasure as knowing that you loved me."

In the long and pleasant conversations of the Count and Marquise, he

was frequently embarrassed in relation to the duties imposed on him as

chief of the _Carbonari_. Aminta never dared to speak to him in

relation to that subject, though she was more anxious about it. On

this point alone the Count was impenetrable, avoiding with care all

that related to his political plans, and giving the Marquise no

information about them.

One day Aminta, the Prince de Maulear, the Countess of Grandmesnil,

and Taddeo, were in the drawing-room. The Countess did not love the

young Marquise, whom she looked on as the indirect cause of her

nephew's death. Neither did she love the Count, whose attentions to

Aminta were by no means to her taste. The old lady was aware of

Monte-Leone's opinions, and lost no opportunity to open all her

batteries on liberals, jacobins and foreigners, who sought to make

France the receptacle of the trouble and contests of which it had

already drank so deeply. The Countess said--

"You know the news, brother?" The Prince de Maulear was then playing a

game of chess with Monte-Leone. "We have now, thank God and M. Angles,

one miserable Jacobin the less to deal with."

"Check to your king!" said the Prince to Monte-Leone.

"To be sure," said she, following out the tenor of her own thoughts,

"it would be check to the King, if the opinions of those persons were

to triumph. M. Angles, however, watches over them and us."

For an instant the Count neglected his game. He as well as Taddeo

heard what she had said, and both seemed anxious to hear her out.

"May I venture to inquire, Countess," said the Count, holding his

piece in his hand, and hesitating to place it on the board, "who is

the terrible Jacobin from whom the world is delivered?"

"One of the most dangerous alive, Count," said the old lady, with an

air of triumph. "The man, it is said, had his connections established

through the whole army."

"Check to your king," said the Prince, who was weary of the delay.

"True," said the Count, with visible abstraction; and he played his

game so badly that the Prince won it without difficulty. The latter

said:

"Check-mate--victory--victory!"

"Yes, brother," said the Countess, "a great victory. For the Jacobin

is a general. General B----, one of those vile Buonapartists, to whom,

at a time like this, a regiment should never have been trusted."

The Count and Taddeo grew pale when they heard the General's name. He

was one of the seven chiefs of ventas at the house of Von Apsberg.

"Why was the General arrested?" said the Prince.

"Oh, some plot. The Jacobins and Buonapartists are always at that

business. The details are not yet known. It is certain, however, that

he was arrested this morning at his hotel. I heard so at the Duchess

de Feltre's, whom I visited to-day."

"Strange!" said the Prince; "on the day before yesterday he gave a

ball. Were you not there, Count?" said he to Monte-Leone.

"Yes," said the Count; "I was one of the last to leave. It was then

two o'clock in the morning."

"At noon his generalship was in the Conciergerie. A bad business for

him, for the government has decided to use the greatest severity

against all conspirators. Happily, the police is very expert, and it

is said of every three conspirators one is a spy. A thing very

satisfactory to society, but decidedly unfortunate for the plotters."

"I think," said the Count, indignantly, "that the conspirators are

calumniated. They are bound by such oaths, and are so devoted to their

opinions, that there can be but few traitors among them."

"My dear Count," said the Prince, "the spirit of Monte-Leone of Castle

del Uovo is yet visible, and you do not seem to have recovered from

your old disease. When you speak of conspirators you seem to defend

your friends. I hope, however, for your sake, and for the sake of

those who love you," said he, pointing to Aminta, "that you have

renounced for ever your old enterprises. His Majesty, Louis XVIII.,

the other day spoke highly of you, relying much on your devotion, and

he cannot have to do with an ingrate."

"Ah!" said Taddeo, with stupefaction, as he looked at his associate,

"the King of France relies on the devotion of Monte-Leone!"

"I know not why," said the Count, not a little moved by this _brevet_

of royalism. "I confess, though, that I shall be surprised to give any

chagrin or uneasiness to my friends."

These words were in a manner wrung from the Count by the paleness and

agitation of Aminta since the commencement of the conversation. This

new declaration increased Taddeo's surprise.

"Well, well," said the Prince, "there is pardon for every sin. We

know, and we look on you as a wandering sheep returned to the fold.

See, however, what are the consequences of a bad reputation. An

insurrection breaks out in Italy, and you are at once thought to be

its accomplice in France. You are about to be expelled from the

country and treated as an enemy, when we acquire a certainty. What do

I say? when the King of France and his ministers swear by you alone!"

This series of praises in relation to his royalty evidently increased

the bad humor of the Count, as well as the astonishment of Taddeo.

Monte-Leone was about to reply, even though he destroyed his influence

with the Prince and Marquise. He was about to repel the fanciful

compliments to his loyalty, when the Countess of Grandmesnil folded up

her work. This was the usual signal for dispersion, and all were about

to leave, when the Marquise said to Monte-Leone, "Count, will you

remain here a few moments? I wish to speak to you of the charity in

which you were kind enough to unite with me."

The Count went anxiously to Aminta's side.

The Prince said, with a smile, "No one ever refuses to speak with a

pretty woman. That is even the weak side of our ministers. Talk,

then, with my daughter-in-law, and neither the Countess nor I will

trouble you." He then took the Countess's arm, and led her from the

room. Taddeo remained, for his interest with the Count was too grave

to permit him to leave thus. Aminta said but a few words to

Monte-Leone. The deep emotion of the young woman, however, gave them a

serious character. "Listen," said she. "I do not know what is about to

happen, but your agitation, and that of Taddeo, when the Countess

spoke of General B----, did not escape me. A painful presentiment

assures me that you are involved in some secret plot, and that new

dangers menace you. In the name of all that is dear to you, in the

name of your love to me, I conjure you to abandon those ideas, or I

shall die of terror and despair." She then, without speaking a word

more, kissed her brother, and retired. The Count stood as if he were

struck with a thunderbolt. Taddeo took his hand, and said, "Come,

come," wresting the Count from the painful thoughts Aminta had called

up. "Come, the arrest of General B---- may ruin all." They entered

Monte-Leone's carriage, and drove to the Duke d'Harcourt. They hoped

to find the Vicomte, and take him to Matheus, for the opinion of each

of the four was necessary in considering the best means of warding off

the peril which menaced the association. D'Harcourt was in, but

Monte-Leone and Taddeo had not expected the spectacle which awaited

them. The Vicomte had one of those sudden attacks, forerunners of the

cruel disease which had devastated his family. The pleasures of the

winter, in which the imprudent young man madly indulged, and perhaps

also the cares and anxieties of his political relations, the nocturnal

ventas he was often obliged to attend, had severely shaken his already

feeble health, and caused a cough, every utterance of which sounded to

his father like a funeral knell. The Count and Taddeo found him in

bed. Von Apsberg was by his side, and opposite the doctor was the

charming Marie, glancing alternately from the doctor to the patient.

The Duke leaned on the fireplace, and gently scolded Rene for his

folly and imprudence. The arrival of the two friends produced a

cessation to this, but the Duke continued: "Come, gentlemen, and

assist me to produce some effect on your friend; for, unassisted, even

I cannot. Tell him that such an exposure of his life, in folly and

dissipation, is a double crime, when his health is so dear to an old

man who has no other son." Tears came into the Duke's eyes as he

spoke, which Marie kissed away.

"Now, Rene," said she, "you see how unhappy you make us all. Promise,

then, to be more reasonable."

"Father," said Rene, giving the Duke his hand, "I will promise you to

do the impossible thing, to be prudent. Besides, you have a powerful

auxiliary in my friend Monte-Leone, who has committed not a few

follies in his time. He has however begun a new life, and will soon be

entirely converted by Hymen."

"What," said Marie, "is the Count about to be married?"

"Mademoiselle," said the Count, "your brother is indiscreet, and you

can never take half that he says as literal."

"Then," said Marie, "you are in love--that is about the half of his

statement." And Marie blushed.

Von Apsberg said, as he remarked the embarrassment of the young girl,

"Our patient needs the warmth and mildness of the south. Magnetism

with the Vicomte will be powerless, and he must avoid cold and

dampness. He must also be prudent, and that is the greatest

difficulty. I however rely on his promise and his devotion to us.

Adieu, Messieurs," said he, bowing to Taddeo and Monte-Leone. "Do not

make him talk, or suffer him to sit up too long." The Duke left,

accompanied by Marie, whose last look seemed to recommend her brother

to the doctor. Perhaps, though, this glance had another signification,

for the eyes of young women mean a great deal. As soon as the four

associates were alone, the Count told Matheus of the arrest.

Von Apsberg thought: "The General cannot be in danger. Only one

evidence of his participation could have been found, and that

Monte-Leone gave me on the day before yesterday. I am sure I placed it

in the secret drawer of my laboratory, the key of which I alone keep."

"What proof do you mean?" asked d'Harcourt, whose memory was troubled

by illness.

"A proof," said Monte-Leone, "which would be overwhelming in the case

of the General and a number of our brethren--the roll of the venta

over which he presides. This roll he has signed. He gave it to me at

two in the morning of the day before yesterday, and I gave it to Von

Apsberg on the next day."

"Then it matters not. Though the General has been arrested, the

mystery of ventas has not been penetrated. I am assured that skilful

and incessant espionage hovers around us, and the time for action

should be no longer delayed."

"But," said the Count, to whom this idea recalled what the Marquise

had said, "we should not raise a flag we cannot defend. The forces the

General controlled are indispensable to our success."

"To replace soldiers," said Von Apsberg, "we shall have opinion on our

side. Our various ventas will be valiant soldiers, and will be

encouraged when they see themselves so much more numerous than they

expect."

"Do not let us be hasty," said Monte-Leone. "The six chiefs of the

principal ventas, like the brave General, must give me the lists of

ventas, and only when we are sure of their number will we act."

His three friends then adopted Monte-Leone's opinion, and they

separated, mutually recommending prudence to each other. There

remained, however, a species of surprise, and an injurious impression

in relation to Monte-Leone's hesitation. He had usually been the most

decided of the four.

When Von Apsberg returned home, he went to his laboratory, and opened

the bureau in which the papers of the association were kept. He

satisfied himself that the lists of the various ventas were safe. He

breathed freely and slept soundly, without any trouble on account of

the arrest of the General. On the next day, however, a letter, hastily

written with a pencil, was brought him by a man who at once

disappeared. It was from General A----, and was as follows:

"The list of our associates, certified by myself, is in the possession

of the prefect of police. I saw it myself, and I am ruined."

Von Apsberg uttered a cry of terror. He was utterly confounded.

II.--THEY SAY.

The arrest of General A---- produced a double effect in Paris. The

city began to have confidence in the vigilant police, which sought for

and arrested the enemies of order every where and in every rank, while

the chiefs of the great association of Carbonarism trembled when they

saw the government on the track of their plans and projects. They then

asked on all sides what could have been the motive of the

incarceration of the General, and how they had discovered the

criminal, or rather the criminals, for the principal associates of the

_venta_ over which the General presided, were arrested after their

chief. Still other arrests were subsequently made. Nothing, however,

transpired, either in relation to the offence of which the General was

accused, or the secret means by which the police had acquired

information of them. The police acted prudently and with great skill,

for the General and his associates were but a small part of an immense

plot. Time and secret service alone would give the government a clue

to follow all the secret labyrinths of this vast plot, which menaced

France and Europe. A conspiracy and military plot was talked of, and

the trial of the affair was understood to be postponed until time

should throw more light on the matter. The authorities were not in a

hurry, they needed other aims, and waited patiently to procure them.

Thus passed a month; and as in Paris every thing is soon forgotten,

people paid no attention to General A---- and his imprisonment. Public

attention, however, was reattracted to this mysterious affair. The

entertainments, concerts, and receptions of the court, made the city

joyous. The gold of countless visitors from foreign nations gave

activity to commerce, and there was an universal spirit of rivalry in

luxury and opulence. Then the Duchess de Berri gave those charming

balls, of which those who were admitted even now talk of.

The mystery of the note written to Von Apsberg by General A----, in

which he assured him he had seen the list of the venta, he had himself

certified to in the hands of the prefect of police, remained

impenetrable to the supreme _venta_, for Von Apsberg had the list the

Count had given him. The General was in close confinement, and no

intercourse could be had with him. The six other chiefs of the ventas

were ignorant of this incident of the arrest of their confederate. The

four brothers of the central venta had resolved not to suffer the

circumstance to transpire, because the Count fancied this circumstance

would chill their zeal, and make them uneasy about the new lists. On

these lists, as we have said, the decision of the time of action was

made to depend, as it would reveal to the four chiefs the exact number

of their confederates in Paris. According to the statutes of

carbonarism, the signatures of the brethren were sacred engagements,

which made it indispensable for them to give their aid to the

undertaking when the hour and day should be appointed. The lists were,

then, a kind of declaration of war against the government, in which

they must either conquer or die. This is the prudence of all bad

causes. Persons thus involved have no confidence that their associates

will keep their oaths, and put remorse and repentance out of the

question by allowing no alternative between ruin and safety. The

Vicomte d'Harcourt, but slightly recovered from his indisposition,

seldom left his father's house, and participated but slightly in the

pleasures of the season. Taddeo, whose devotion to the Neapolitan

ambassadress constantly increased, visited her every day, and went

nowhere else. Though aware that she was constantly anxious to speak of

the Count, he did not despair of being able some day to touch her

heart. So great were his attentions, that in society he was looked on

as the _cicisbeo_ of the Duchess. The Duke of Palma, devoted to his

opera-loves, seemed not at all offended at the frequent visits of

Taddeo Rovero, whose attentions did not at all shock his Italian

ideas. Von Apsberg lived more retired than ever, and rarely left his

laboratory except when he went to the Duke d'Harcourt's. There the

intelligent doctor was kindly received by all the family, Marie

included, and his fair patient's health seemed visibly to improve, as

those flowers which have been too long neglected always do when

attended to by a skilful horticulturist. Monte-Leone devoted to the

society of Paris, of which he was passionately fond, all the hours

which he passed away from the Marquise. This, however, was a duty, for

there only could he meet the Carbonari who belonged to the upper

class without giving rise to suspicion. The trial of General A---- was

soon to take place, and the preparations for it had already been

begun. Revelations or anxious inquiries might destroy the association.

Concert was required to avoid this, and Count Monte-Leone gave this

information to MM. C----, the lawyer B----, the baron de Ch----, the

banker F----, and the rich merchant Ober, who was perhaps from his

extended commercial relations, the most important of the Carbonari.

A great dinner was given by the banker F---- to enable the chiefs to

confer with Monte-Leone. But in addition to these personages, and in

order that public attention should not be fixed on them alone, F----

had invited the _elite_ of the capital, several peers of France, some

illustrious soldiers, many deputies, and several women famous for

their rank and beauty. Insensibly conversation assumed a political

tone, as at that time every thing did. Monte-Leone, whom the abuses of

the French government and the _camarilla_ of the Tuilleries made most

indignant, gave vent to his opinions and complained bitterly of the

acts of the ministry. He compassionated the people, whose liberties

were being swept away, and reprobated the censorship of the liberty of

the press and of freedom of speech--the only resource of the oppressed

and the only means of reaching the oppressors. The master of the

house, M. F----, agreed with the Count in the liberal opinions he had

expressed. Led on by the example, B---- and C---- testified their

sympathy with what the Count had said, and their wish to see a change

in the fortune of a country where the institutions satisfied neither

the wants nor the rights of the oppressed. This discussion, which had

been provoked by the Count, was so bold and so decided that many of

the guests looked on with terror, fearing they would be compromised by

the expression of such revolutionary ideas. Just then many of the

guests of M. F----, taking him aside from the table, asked anxiously

if he was satisfied of the discretion of all the persons present, and

also of their honor. M. F---- energetically repelled such fears,

saying: "The people whom I receive are not all friends of the

government. Nothing, however, said here will be repeated, for the

minister of police has no representative at my table." The words of

their host in a degree satisfied some of the most timid. It was then

said openly that amid the most eminent persons met with in society

were found individuals in the secret pay of M. Angles, and that many

ruined and extravagant nobleman did not hesitate to exist in this

manner. People said that in the drawing-room of M. F---- Monte-Leone

had determined to defy the government, and they looked on his conduct

under existing circumstances as most imprudent.

During the evening, and when all were engaged, the chiefs of _ventas_

took occasion, one by one, to isolate themselves from company and gave

the Count the rolls. It was then agreed, also, that the last of these

documents being complete, notice should be given without delay, and

during the trial of the General, of the day for the commencement of

the insurrectionary movement by which Carbonarism was to be revealed

to France and to Europe. The terrible plan, however, was foiled by

various events which attacked the society unexpectedly.

Four days after the dinner of M. F----, he, the lawyer B----, the

baron Ch----, who had taken so decided a part in the discussion

provoked by Monte-Leone, and who, on that very evening, had given him

the fatal lists of his associates, were arrested. The first was taken

in his office, the second just as he left his cabinet, and the third

on his way to the opera. The capital was amazed at this news. All the

other guests of F---- began to examine their consciences, and sought

to recall whether or not they had given utterance to any governmental

heresy at the fatal dinner, and whether they had not uttered something

rash. They were doubtful if any opinion at all might not expose them

to the resentment and vigilance of an adroit and secret police. It

seemed beyond a doubt that the remarks of the persons who had been

arrested had provoked this rigorous action, and that some ear in the

pay of the police had heard their dangerous conversation, and noted

the violent expression of their opinions. The conduct of all the

guests was then passed in review, and the public and private life of

each examined. Their domestic history and life were inquired into, and

their weak points, habits, errors, and tastes, were scrutinized.

No rank, family, sex, or social position, was neglected, and not even

intrigues, life, nor money, were considered sufficient to shield the

informer. All were anxious to tear away the mask from the common

enemy, to crush the serpent, who, sliding stealthily into society,

gnawed its very heart and lacerated that bosom which sheltered it.

The arrest of General A---- then recurred to the memory of all. This

event had taken place after a ball which the General had given. It was

after an entertainment given by F---- that he, too, had lost his

liberty. On this occasion two other important men had shared the fate

of the rich banker, and, like him, they had both been energetic,

violent, and pitiless denouncers of a ministry which defied public

opinion and outraged the nation. People then remembered that Count

Monte-Leone had provoked the conversation--that he had gone farther

than any one else on the dangerous ground--and that his daring had

surpassed that of the master of the house and his guests. All expected

he would be arrested also. This fear was especially well founded, as

Monte-Leone concealed neither his liberal opinions nor his

revolutionary doctrines, and in fact every thing in his previous

conduct pointed him out as one of the persons to whom the attention of

the police would especially be directed. People were, therefore,

amazed to see Monte-Leone preserve his liberty, and that one of the

four speakers who had been most imprudent enjoyed entire impunity.

Astonishment, however, was not all, for strange reports were soon

circulated, and rumors were heard in every direction. The impunity of

the Count became the universal subject of conversation. His private

life was taken in hand, and his whole career, as it were, extended on

the anatomical table of moral anatomy. The scalpel of public opinion,

it is well known, pitilessly dissects every subject it wishes

thoroughly to understand. The THEY SAY, that terrible creature to

which we have already referred, began to play its part. It was heard

every where. "THEY SAY Count Monte-Leone cannot be a stranger to what

is passing. He was seen to talk to General A---- on the night of the

ball for a long time."

"What! Count Monte-Leone?--a man of his rank?"

"Ah, these Italian noblemen are all suspicious."

"He--a liberal--a revolutionist!"

"Listen to me. People often change their opinions in this world,

especially when fortune disappears, and want of money and care

supervene. _They say_ he is completely ruined, yet he is still very

luxurious in his mode of life."

"True--that is strange."

"Oh, no, not at all. _They say_ the strong box of the police enables

him to maintain his style."

"That may be."

"_They say_, also, that the order to leave France given by the

minister was but a trick to divert suspicion and keep him here

usefully."

"Do you think so? Then he is a villain, and should be avoided. He is

a----"

"Oh, I know nothing of it--but _they say_ so."

_They_ did say so, but when that awful rumor was first pronounced

_they_ did not. These words were produced by the terror which the

events of the day produced on the mind of every friend, even of the

three imprisoned Carbonari. Perhaps some malevolent spirit

disseminated them. This rumor was circulated from house to house, like

a drop of oil, which though first scarcely perceptible, sullies the

fairest fabrics utterly. A trifling fault is thus made to do the part

of an atrocious crime. At first the rumor was whispered. It then grew

bolder, and finally fortified itself by a thousand corroborations

furnished by chance or gossip. Every person who detailed it added to

its incidents and arguments. Within one month after the dinner all

Paris heard of the terrible offence against society attributed to

Count Monte-Leone. As is always the case, however, the three friends

of the Count were the last to hear of this slander. Every one who was

aware of their intimacy took care not to speak to them of the rumor,

for no one wished to involve himself by repeating a story entirely

unsubstantiated, and the origin of which was unknown. The consequence

was that the three persons who could have refuted the calumny were

entirely ignorant of the stigma attached to their friend. Monte-Leone

had no more suspicion than his friends had in relation to the horrible

fable.

The other chiefs of the principal ventas, who might have told him what

was said, terrified at the fate of their associates, lived apart,

refused to see any one, and thus heard none of the imputations against

the high-priest of Carbonarism. Then commenced a series of mistakes,

surprises, and mortifications, in which Monte-Leone would see no

insult. His life, however, became an enigma, the explanation of which

he could not divine. Certain rooms under various pretexts were closed

to him. Often persons who once had been most anxious to secure his

attendance at their entertainments pretended to forget him. The world

did not dare, however, to brave an enemy whose secret power it was

ignorant of, but it exhibited a certain coldness and oblivion which

deeply wounded him. His most intimate acquaintances avoided him with

studied care, and when they accepted his hand did so with a marked

expression of annoyance. An immense void existed around him. His hotel

was a solitude, and the houses of others were shut to him. The Count

at first thought he found a motive for this in the apprehension all

entertained of his affiliation with some secret association. When he

saw that the police paid no attention to him, he was compelled to seek

some other reason for his public proscription. What this cause was he

did not divine and could not ask, for a position of this kind is such

that an honorable man thinks it beneath him to ask for an explanation

of merely natural occurrences. Wounded, disgusted, and grieved by the

strange existence created for him, Monte-Leone felt himself at once a

prey to the distrust which ostracism of this kind creates in the bosom

of all who are subject to it. The world thought that by avoiding

society Count Monte-Leone confessed the justice of its allegations. He

became every day more attentive to the charming woman he adored, and

who only waited the time when the proprieties of society would permit

her to make him her husband. In her affection he found a consolation

for all the external chagrin which annoyed him, for a mute terror had

taken possession of the Carbonari since the occurrence of the many

arrests, the motives of which were as yet wrapped in such impenetrable

mystery. An event which was altogether unexpected made his position

yet more complicated. He was one evening in one of the few houses to

which he was yet invited. This was the house of M. L----, where the

Marquis de Maulear had lost such immense sums to the Englishman who

subsequently ruined him. M. L----, either more prudent or circumspect

than others, had not listened to the reports which were circulated

about Monte-Leone, and had invited him to his magnificent hotel in the

Rue d'Antin.

Monte-Leone had avoided the crowd, and walked down the long avenue of

exotic flowers and camelias, then almost unknown in Paris. He came

upon a boudoir where several men were speaking. The Count was about to

go back, when his name struck on his ear. "Yes, gentlemen," said one

of the speakers, in a most indignant tone, "you may well be astonished

at my presence here, while my family is in tears, and my prospects

blasted and made desperate. Only eight days since I came to Paris, and

am here to find Count Monte-Leone, my challenge to whom, to deliver

which I have sought him every where, should be as solemn as the

vengeance I will exact."

No sooner had the Count heard these words than he rushed into the

boudoir, and stood face to face with the speaker, who was a young man

of twenty-eight or thirty, wearing the uniform of the royal navy. His

countenance was mild and noble, but bore an expression of perfect fury

when he saw Monte-Leone.

"Monsieur," said the Count, "you will not have to look farther for the

person of whom you have dared to speak thus. I am thankful that I am

here to spare you farther trouble in looking for me, though why you do

so I cannot conceive."

"He was listening to us," said the young man to his friends, in a tone

of the deepest contempt. "Well, after all, that is right enough."

"Chance," said the Count, resuming his _sang-froid_ and control over

himself, which he always maintained in such emergencies, "led me

within sound of your voice. You and I also should be glad that this is

the case, for it seems to me a ball is a bad place for such an

explanation as you seem to wish."

"All places are good," said the naval officer, in a most insolent

tone, "to tell you what I think of you. To repeat to you the epithet

you have overheard, and which I am willing yet again to declare to all

in these rooms."

"Sir," said Monte-Leone, with the same calmness, "will you tell me

first to whom I speak?"

"My name is A----, and I am a lieutenant of the royal navy. My father

is the person whom your infamous denunciations have caused to be

imprisoned in the Conciergerie!"

"What!" said the Count, "are you the son of General A----?"

"What influences me I cannot and will not tell you; for then it would

be out of the question for me to meet you."

"Gentlemen," said the Count, speaking to those who witnessed this

scene, to which the attention of many others had now been called,

"this young man is mad. I, more than any person, have pitied his

father, and I wish to give General A---- a new proof of my sympathy,

by granting his son a delay until to-morrow, to enable him to repair

the incredible injury he has done me. Here is my card," said he,

placing it on a table, "and I shall wait until to-morrow for an

explanation of the unintelligible conduct of Lieutenant A----."

As soon as the Count had finished he left the boudoir, and the

Lieutenant's friends kept possession of him, taking him out of the

hotel. On the next day Monte-Leone received the following note:

"COUNT--Instead of making an apology to you, I maintain all I said.

You are a coward and a scoundrel, and you know why. I repeat, that if

my voice articulated or my hand traced, why I speak thus, it would be

impossible for me to kill you and avenge myself. Do not therefore ask

me to make an explanation of what you know perfectly well. If you are

unmoved by what I now say, and if I do not bring you out, I will have

recourse to other means. I will await you and your witnesses to-day at

two o'clock, at the _bois de Bologne_, behind Longchamp. I have

selected this hour in order that I might previously see my father.

"GUSTAVE A----,

"Lieutenant, Royal Navy."

"All hell is let loose against me," said the Count, as he perused this

letter. "Why can I not penetrate the awful mystery which enshrouds

me!"

Taking a pen, he wrote the following words, which he gave to the

bearer of the challenge:

"I will be at the _bois de Bologne_ at two o'clock."

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer

& Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United

States for the Southern District of New-York.

Continued from page 54.

[8] _Anglice._ Only the first step is troublesome.--TR.

From Fraser's Magazine.

POULAILLER, THE ROBBER.

Cartouche had been arrested, tried, condemned, and executed, some

seven or eight years, and no longer occupied the attention of the good

people of Paris, to whom his almost melodramatic life and death had

afforded a most interesting and enduring topic. They were languishing,

like the Athenians of old, for something new, when there arose a rumor

that another robber, more dexterous, more audacious, more

extraordinary, ay, and more cruel than Cartouche, was roaming about

the streets of their city. What was his name? whence did he come? were

questions in the mouth of every one, as each of his numerous daring

acts was made public,--questions which no one could answer.

In vain was every arm of the police put in requisition--crime after

crime was committed with impunity, and terror reigned supreme.

At last the criminal himself disdained concealment, and all

Paris--nay, a considerable portion of Europe--trembled at the name of

POULAILLER.

He appeared about the year 1730, and astonished the world by deeds,

some of them so shocking, and at the same time so wonderful, that they

gave some color to the belief of many that he was aided by

supernatural agency.

This belief was supported by a history of the circumstances attending

his birth.

There lived in a village on the coast of Brittany a man, poor but of

good repute, and well beloved by his neighbors,--an intrepid mariner,

but poor as Job himself when his friends came to comfort him. A robust

and well-knit frame, combined with a fine frank countenance, well

bronzed by the sea-breezes, was looked on favorably by all, and by

none more than by the young lasses whose furtive glances rested with

pleasure on the manly form and gallant bearing of Jacques Poulailler.

His strength was prodigious, and his temerity upon the ocean

incredible.

Such qualities are appreciated in every country; and among the

beauties of the village, one remarkable for her superiority in wealth,

as well as natural gifts, was attracted by them, and Jacques

Poulailler had the good fortune to find favor in the eyes of her who

was known in her little world as _La belle Isabeau Colomblet_.

At no great distance from this maritime village, on the crest of a

rock lashed by the waves, which at high tides was perfectly insulated,

dwelt a personage of whose origin every one was ignorant. The building

where he had established himself had long been of evil fame throughout

the country, and was only known as _La Tour Maudite_. The firesides

resounded with tales of terror enacted in this lonely and ominous

theatre. Fiends, in the olden time had made it their abode, as was

currently reported and believed. From that time, it was asserted that

no human being could dwell there without having previously entered

into a compact with the evil one. The isolation of the place, the

continued agitation of the waves at its base, the howlings of the wind

around its frowning battlements, the traces of the thunderbolts that

from time to time had blackened and almost charred its walls, the

absence of bush or tree, or any thing in the shape of blossom or

verdure--for neither wall-flower nor even moss would grow there--had

produced their effect on the superstitious spirit of the neighbors,

and the accursed place had remained untenanted by any thing earthly

for forty or fifty years.

One gloomy day, however, a man was seen prowling about the vicinity.

He came and went over the sands, and, just as a storm was rising, he

threw himself into a boat, gained the offing, and disappeared.

Every one believed that he was lost; but next morning there he was.

Surprised at this, the neighbors began to inquire who he could be; and

at last learned that he had bought the tower of the proprietor, and

had come to dwell there. This was all the information that their

restless curiosity could obtain. Whence did he come, and what had he

done? In vain were these questions asked. All were querists, and none

found a respondent. Two or three years elapsed before his name

transpired. At last it was discovered, nobody knew how, that his name

was Roussart.

He appeared to be a man above six feet in height, strongly built, and

apparently about thirty years of age. His countenance was all but

handsome, and very expressive. His conduct was orderly, and without

reproach, and, proving himself to be an experienced fisherman, he

became of importance in that country.

No one was more weatherwise than Roussart, and no one turned his

foreknowledge to such good account. He had been seen frequently to

keep the sea in such fearful tempests, that all agreed that he must

have been food for fishes if he had not entered into some agreement

with Satan. When the stoutest hearts quailed, and ordinary men

considered it suicidal to venture out, Roussart was to be seen braving

the tumult of winds and waves, and always returned to the harbor safe

and sound.

People began to talk about this, and shook their heads ominously.

Little cared Roussart for their words or gestures; but he was the only

one in the commune who never went to church. The cure at last gave out

that he was excommunicated; and from that time his neighbors broke off

all communication with him.

Things had arrived at this point, when it was rumored that the gallant

fisherman, Jacques Poulailler, had touched the heart of _La belle

Isabeau_. Soon their approaching marriage became the topic of the

village; and, finally, one Sunday, after mass, the bans were first

published by the vicar. The lads of the village, congregated on the

shore, were congratulating Poulailler on the auspicious event, when

Roussart suddenly appeared among them.

His presence was a surprise. He had always avoided the village

meetings as much as others had sought them; and this sudden change in

his habits gave a new impulse to curiosity.

The stranger appeared to seek some one with his eyes, and presently

walked straight up to the happy Jacques, who, intoxicated with joy,

was giving and receiving innumerable shakes of the hand.

"Master Poulailler," said Roussart, "you are going to be married,

then?"

"That seems sure," replied Poulailler.

"Not more sure than that your first-born will belong to the evil one.

I, Roussart, tell you so."

With that he turned on his heel, and regained his isolated dwelling,

leaving his auditors amazed by his abrupt and extraordinary

announcement, and poor Jacques more affected by it than any one else.

From that moment Roussart showed himself no more in the neighborhood,

and soon disappeared altogether, without leaving a trace to indicate

what had become of him.

Most country people are superstitious,--the Bretons eminently so, and

Jacques Poulailler never forgot the sinister prophecy of Roussart. His

comrades were not more oblivious; and when, a year after his marriage,

his first-born came into the world, a universal cry saluted the infant

boy as devoted to Satan. _Donne au diable_ were the words added to the

child's name whenever it was mentioned. It is not recorded whether or

no he was born with teeth, but the gossips remarked that during the

ceremony of baptism the new-born babe gave vent to the most fearful

howlings. He writhed, he kicked, his little face exhibited the most

horrible contortions; but as soon as they carried him out of the

church, he burst out into laughter as unearthly as it was unnatural.

After these evil omens every body expected that the little Pierre

Poulailler would be ugly and ill-formed. Not a bit of it--on the

contrary, he was comely, active, and bold. His fine fresh complexion

and well-furnished mouth were set off by his brilliant black eyes and

hair, which curled naturally all over his head. But he was a sad

rogue, and something more. If an oyster-bed, a warren, or an orchard

was robbed, Pierre Poulailler was sure to be the boy accused. In vain

did his father do all that parent could to reform him--he was

incorrigible.

Monsieur le cure had some difficulty to bring him to his first

communion. The master of the village exhausted his catalogue of

corrections--and the catalogue was not very short--without succeeding

in inculcating the first notions of the Christian faith and the

doctrine of the cross. "What is the good of it?" would the urchin say.

"Am not I devoted to the devil, and will not that be sufficient to

make my way?"

At ten years of age Pierre was put on board a merchant-ship, as

cabin-boy. At twelve he robbed his captain, and escaped to England

with the spoil. In London he contrived to pass for the natural son of

a French Duke; but his numerous frauds forced him again to seek his

native land, where, in his sixteenth year, he enlisted as a drummer in

the regiment of Champagne, commanded by the Count de Varicleres.

Before he had completed his eighteenth year he deserted, joined a

troop of fortune-telling gipsies, whom he left to try his fortune with

a regular pilferer, and finally, engaged himself to a rope-dancer. He

played comedy, sold orvietan with the success of Doctor Dulcamara

himself, and in a word, passed through all the degrees which lead to

downright robbery.

Once his good angel seemed to prevail. He left his disreputable

companions and entered the army honorably. For a short time there were

hopes of him; it was thought that he would amend his life, and his

superiors were satisfied with his conduct. But the choicest weapon in

the armory of him to whom he had been devoted was directed against

him. A _vivandiere_--the prettiest and most piquante of her

tribe--raised a flame in his heart that burnt away all other

considerations; but he might still have continued in a comparatively

respectable course, if the sergeant-major had not stood forward as his

rival. The coquette had in her heart a preference for Pierre; and the

sergeant, taking advantage of his rank, insulted his subordinate so

grossly that he was repaid by a blow. The sergeant's blood was up, and

as he rushed to attack Pierre, the soldier, drawing his sabre,

dangerously wounded his superior officer, who, after lingering a few

days, went the way of all flesh. Pierre would have tasted the tender

mercies of the provost-marshal; but fortunately the regiment was lying

near the frontier, which our hero contrived to cross, and then

declared war against society at large.

The varied knowledge and acquirements of the youth--his courage, true

as steel, and always equal to the occasion--the prudence and foresight

with which he meditated a _coup de main_--the inconceivable rapidity

of his execution--his delicate and disinterested conduct towards his

comrades--all contributed to render him famous, in the _famosus_

sense, if you will, and to raise him to the first place.

Germany was the scene of his first exploits. The world had condemned

him to death, and he condemned the world to subscribe to his living.

At this period, he had posted himself in ambush on the crest of a

hill, whence his eye could command a great extent of country; and

certainly the elegance of his mien, his graceful bearing, and the

splendor of his arms, might well excuse those who did not take him for

what he really was. He was on the hillside when two beautiful young

women appeared in sight. He lost no time in joining them; and, as

youth is communicative, soon learnt, in answer to his questions, that,

tired of remaining in the carriage, they had determined to ascend the

hill on foot.

"You are before the carriage, then, mademoiselle?"

"Yes, sir; cannot you hear the whip of the postillions?"

The conversation soon became animated, and every moment made a deeper

inroad into the heart of our handsome brigand: but every moment also

made the situation more critical. On the other side of the hill was

the whole band, ranged in order of battle, and ready to pounce upon

the travellers. Having ascertained the place of abode of his fair

companions, and promised to avail himself of the first opportunity to

pay his compliments to them there, he bade them politely adieu; and

having gained a path cut through the living rock, known but to few,

descended with the agility of a chamois to his party, whom he implored

not to attack the carriage which was approaching.

But, if Poulailler had his reasons for this chivalrous conduct, his

band were actuated by no such motives, and they demurred to his

prayer. He at once conquered their hesitation by bidding them name the

value that they put on their expected booty, purchased the safety of

the travellers by the sum named, and the two fair daughters of the

Baron von Kirbergen went on their way full of the praises of the

handsome stranger whose acquaintance they had made, and in blissful

ignorance of the peril they had passed.

That very day, Poulailler left his lieutenant in the temporary command

of the band, mounted his most beautiful horse, followed his beloved to

the castle of her father, and introduced himself as the Count Petrucci

of Sienna, whom he had lately robbed, and whose papers he had taken

care to retain with an eye to future business.

His assumed name, backed by his credentials, secured for him a

favorable reception, and he well knew how to improve the occasion. An

accomplished rider, and bold in the chase, he won the good opinion of

the Baron; while his musical and conversational talent made him the

pet of the drawing-room. The young and charming Wilhelmina surrendered

her heart to the gay and amiable cavalier; and all went merrily, till

one fine morning Fortune, whose wheel is never stationary, sent the

true count to the castle. It was no case of the two Sosias, for no two

persons could well be more unlike; and as soon as the real personage

saw his representative, he recognized him as the robber who had stolen

his purse as well as his name.

Here was a pretty business. Most adventurers would have thrown up the

game as desperate; but our hero, with a front worthy of Fathom

himself, boldly proclaimed the last visitor to be an impostor, and

argued the case so ably, and with such well-simulated indignation at

the audacity of the newcomer, that the Baron was staggered, and

despatched messengers to the partners of a mercantile house at

Florence, to whom the true Petrucci was well known.

To wait for the result of the inquiry would have been a folly of which

Poulailler was not likely to be guilty; so he made a moonlight

flitting of it that very night--but not alone. Poor Wilhelmina had

cast in her lot with her lover for good or for evil, and fled with

him.

The confusion that reigned in the best of all possible castles, the

next morning, may be conceived; but we must leave the Baron

blaspheming, and the Baroness in hysterics, to follow the fugitives,

who gained France in safety, and were soon lost in the labyrinths of

Paris.

There he was soon joined by his band, to the great loss and terror of

the honest people of the good city. Every day, M. Herault, the

lieutenant of police, was saluted by new cases of robbery and

violence, which his ablest officers could neither prevent nor punish.

The organization of the band was so complete, and the head so ably

directed the hands, that neither life nor property was considered safe

from one moment to another. Nor were accounts of the generosity of the

chief occasionally wanting to add to his fame.

One night, as Poulailler was traversing the roofs with the agility of

a cat, for the purpose of entering a house whose usual inmates were

gone into the country, he passed the window of a garret whence issued

a melancholy concert of sobs and moans. He stopped, and approached the

apartment of a helpless family, without resources, without bread, and

suffering the pangs of hunger. Touched by their distress, and

remembering his own similar sufferings before Fortune favored him, he

was about to throw his purse among them, when the door of the chamber

opened violently, and a man, apparently beside himself, rushed in with

a handful of gold, which he cast upon the floor.

"There," cried he, in a voice broken by emotion, "there,

take--buy--eat; but it will cost you dear. I pay for it with my honor

and peace of mind. Baffled in all my attempts to procure food for you

honestly, I was on my despairing return, when I beheld, at a short

distance from me, a tall but slight-made man, who walked hurriedly,

but yet with an air as if he expected some one. Ah! thought I, this is

some lover; and yielding to the temptation of the fiend, I seized him

by the collar. The poor creature was terrified, and, begging for

mercy, put into my hands this watch, two gold snuff-boxes, and those

Louis, and fled. There they are; they will cost me my life. I shall

never survive this infamy."

The starving wife re-echoed these sentiments; and even the hungry

children joined in the lamentations of the miserable father.

All this touched Pierre to the quick. To the great terror of the

family, he entered the room, and stood in the midst.

"Be comforted," said he to the astonished husband; "you have robbed a

robber. The infamous coward who gave up to you this plunder is one of

Poulailler's sentinels. Keep it; it is yours."

"But who are you?" cried the husband and wife;--"who are you, and by

what right is it that you thus dispose of the goods of another?"

"By the right of a chief over his subalterns. I am Poulailler."

The poor family fell on their knees, and asked what they could do for

him.

"Give me a light," said Pierre, "that I may get down into the street

without breaking my neck."

This reminds one of the answer which Rousseau gave to the Duc de

Praslin, whose Danish dog, as it was running before the carriage, had

upset the peripatetic philosopher.

"What can I do for you?" said the Duke to the fallen author of _La

Nouvelle Heloise_, whose person he did not know.

"You can tie up your dog," replied Jean-Jacques, gathering himself up,

and walking away.

Poulailler having done his best to render a worthy family happy, went

his way, to inflict condign punishment on the poltroon who had so

readily given up the purse and the watches.

The adventures of this accomplished robber were so numerous and

marvellous, that it is rather difficult to make a selection. One

evening, at the _bal de l'Opera_, he made the acquaintance of a

charming woman, who, at first, all indignation, was at length induced

to listen to his proposal, that he should see her home; and promised

to admit him, "if Monseigneur should not be there."

"But who is this Monseigneur?" inquired Pierre.

"Don't ask," replied the fair lady.

"Who is he, fairest?"

"Well, how curious you are; you make me tell all my secrets. If you

must know, he is a prince of the church, out of whose revenues he

supports me; and I cannot but show my gratitude to him."

"Certainly not; he seems to have claims which ought to be attended

to."

By this time they had arrived at an elegantly furnished house, which

they entered, the lady having ascertained that the coast was clear;

and Poulailler had just installed himself, when up drove a

carriage--Monseigneur in person.

The beauty, in a state of distraction, threw herself at the feet of

her spark, and implored him to pass into a back cabinet. Poulailler

obeyed, and had hardly reached his hiding-place, when he beheld,

through the glazed door, Monseigneur, who had gone to his Semele in

all his apostolical magnificence. A large and splendid cross of

diamonds, perfect in water, shot dazzling rays from his breast, where

it was suspended by a chain of cat's-eyes, of great price, set in

gold; the button and loop of his hat blazed with other precious

stones; and his fingers sparkled with rings, whose brilliants were

even greater and more beautiful than those that formed the

constellation of his cross.

It is very seldom that the human heart, however capacious, has room

for two grand passions in activity at the same time. In this instance,

Poulailler no sooner beheld the rich and tempting sight, than he found

that the god of Love was shaking his wings and flying from his bosom,

and that the demon of Cupidity was taking the place of the more

disinterested deity. He rushed from his hiding-place, and presented

himself to the astonished prelate with a poinard in one hand and a

pistol in the other, both of which he held to the sacred breast in the

presence of the distracted lady. The bishop had not learnt to be

careless of life, and had sufficient self-possession in his terror not

to move, lest he should compromise his safety, while Poulailler

proceeded to strip him with a dexterity that practice had rendered

perfect. Diamonds, precious stones, gold, coined and ornamental,

rings, watch, snuff-box, and purse, were transferred from the priest

to the robber with marvellous celerity; then turning to the lady, he

made her open the casket which contained the price of her favors, and

left the house with the plunder and such a laugh as those only revel

in who win.

The lieutenant of police began to take the tremendous success of our

hero to heart, and in his despair at the increasing audacity of the

robber, caused it to be spread amongst his spies, archers, and

sergeants, that he who should bring Poulailler before him should be

rewarded with one hundred pistoles, in addition to a place of two

thousand livres a year.

M. Herault was seated comfortably at his breakfast, when the Count de

Villeneuve was announced. This name was--perhaps is--principally borne

by two celebrated families of Provence and Languedoc. M. Herault

instantly rose and passed into his cabinet, where he beheld a

personage of good mien, dressed to perfection, with as much luxury as

taste, who in the best manner requested a private interview. Orders

were immediately issued that no one should venture to approach till

the bell was rung; and a valet was placed as sentinel in an adjoining

gallery to prevent the possibility of interruption.

"Well, Monsieur le Comte, what is your business with me?"

"Oh, a trifle;--merely a thousand pistoles, which I am about to take

myself from your strong box, in lieu of the one hundred pistoles, and

the snug place, which you have promised to him who would gratify you

by Poulailler's presence. I am Poulailler, who will dispatch you to

the police of the other world with this poisoned dagger, if you raise

your voice or attempt to defend yourself. Nay, stir not--a scratch is

mortal."

Having delivered himself of this address, the audacious personage drew

from his pocket some fine but strong whip-cord, well hackled and

twisted, and proceeded to bind the lieutenant of police hand and foot,

finishing by making him fast to the lock of the door. Then the robber

proceeded to open the lieutenant's secretaire, the drawers of which he

well rummaged, and having filled his pockets with the gold which he

found there, turned to the discomfited lieutenant with a profound bow,

and after a request that he would not take the trouble to show him

out, quietly took his departure.

There are some situations so confounding, that they paralyze the

faculties for a time; and the magistrate was so overcome by his

misfortune, that, instead of calling for aid, as he might have done

when the robber left him, he set to work with his teeth, in vain

endeavors to disengage himself from the bonds which held him fast. An

hour elapsed before any one ventured to disturb M. Herault, who was

found in a rage to be imagined, but not described, at this daring act.

The loss was the least part of the annoyance. A cloud of epigrams flew

about, and the streets resounded with the songs celebrating

Poulailler's triumph and the defeat of the unfortunate magistrate, who

dared not for some time to go into society, where he was sure to find

a laugh at his expense.

But ready as the good people of Paris were with their ridicule, _they_

were by no means at their ease. The depredations of Poulailler

increased with his audacity, and people were afraid to venture into

the streets after nightfall. As soon as the last rays of the setting

sun fell on the Boulevards, the busy crowds began to depart; and when

that day-star sank below the horizon, they were deserted. Nobody felt

safe.

The Hotel de Brienne was guarded like a fortress, but difficulty

seemed to give additional zest to Poulailler. Into this hotel he was

determined to penetrate, and into it he got. While the carriage of the

Princess of Lorraine was waiting at the Opera, he contrived to fix

leathern bands, with screws, under the outside of the bottom of the

body, while his associates were treating the coachman and footman at a

_cabaret_, slipped under the carriage in the confusion of the

surrounding crowd when it drew up to the door of the theatre, and,

depending on the strength of his powerful wrists, held on underneath,

and was carried into the hotel under the very nose of the Swiss

Cerberus.

When the stable-servants were all safe in their beds, Poulailler

quitted his painful hiding-place, where the power of his muscles and

sinews had been so severely tested, and mounted into the hay-loft,

where he remained concealed three nights and four days, sustaining

himself on cakes of chocolate. No one loved good cheer better than he,

or indulged more in the pleasures of the table; but he made himself a

slave to nothing, save the inordinate desire of other men's goods, and

patiently contented himself with what would keep body and soul

together till he was enabled to make his grand _coup_.

At last, Madame de Brienne went in all her glory to the Princess de

Marsan's ball, and nearly all the domestics took advantage of the

absence of their mistress to leave the hotel in pursuit of their own

pleasures. Poulailler then descended from the hay-loft, made his way

to the noble dame's cabinet, forced her secretaire, and possessed

himself of two thousand Louis d'or and a port-folio, which he

doubtless wished to examine at his ease; for, two days afterwards, he

sent it back, (finding it furnished with such securities only as he

could not negotiate with safety,) and a polite note signed with his

name, in which he begged the Princess graciously to receive the

restitution, and to accept the excuses of one who, had he not been

sorely pressed for the moderate sum which he had ventured to take,

would never have thought of depriving the illustrious lady of it;

adding, that when he was in cash, he should be delighted to lend her

double the amount, should her occasions require it.

This impudent missive was lauded as a marvel of good taste at

Versailles, where, for a whole week, every one talked of the

consummate cleverness and exquisite gallantry of the _Chevalier_ de

Poulailler.

This title of honor stuck, and his fame seemed to inspire him with

additional ardor and address. His affairs having led him to Cambray,

he happened to have for a travelling companion the Dean of a

well-known noble Belgian chapter. The conversation rolled on the

notorieties of the day, and Poulailler was a more interesting theme

than the weather. But our chevalier was destined to listen to

observations that did not much flatter his self-esteem, for the Dean,

so far from allowing him any merit whatever as a brigand,

characterized him as an infamous and miserable cutpurse, adding, that

at his first and approaching visit to Paris, he would make it his

business to see the lieutenant of police, and reproach him with the

small pains he took to lay so vile a scoundrel by the heels.

The journey passed off without the occurrence of any thing remarkable;

but about a month after this colloquy M. Herault received a letter,

informing him that on the previous evening, M. de Potter,

_chanoine-doyen_ of the noble chapter of Brussels, had been robbed and

murdered by Poulailler, who, clad in the habits of his victim, and

furnished with his papers, would enter the barrier St. Martin. This

letter purported to have been written by one of his accomplices, who

had come to the determination of denouncing him in the hope of

obtaining pardon.

The horror of M. Herault at the death of this dignified ecclesiastic,

who was personally unknown to him, was, if the truth must be told,

merged in the delight which that magistrate felt in the near prospect

of avenging society and himself on this daring criminal. A cloud of

police officers hovered in ambush at each of the barriers, and

especially at that which bore the name of the saint who divided his

cloak with the poor pilgrim, with directions to seize and bring into

the presence of M. Herault a man habited as an ecclesiastic, and with

the papers of the Dean of the Brussels chapter. Towards evening the

Lille coach arrived, was surrounded and escorted to the hotel des

Messageries, and at the moment when the passengers descended, the

officers pounced upon the personage whose appearance and vestments

corresponded with their instructions.

The resistance made by this personage only sharpened the zeal of the

officers who seized him, and, in spite of his remonstrances and cries,

carried him to the hotel of the police, where M. Herault was prepared

with the proofs of Poulailler's crimes. Two worthy citizens of

Brussels were there, anxious to see the murderer of their friend, the

worthy ecclesiastic, whose loss they so much deplored: but what was

their joy, and, it must be added, the disappointment of M. Herault,

when the supposed criminal turned out to be no other than the good

Dean de Potter himself, safe and sound, but not a little indignant at

the outrage which he had sustained. Though a man of peace, his ire so

far ruffled a generally calm temper, that he could not help asking M.

Herault whether Poulailler (from whom a second letter now arrived,

laughing at their beards) or he, M. Herault, was the chief director of

the police?

William of Deloraine, good at need--

By wily turns, by desperate bounds,

Had baffled Percy's best bloodhounds.

Five times outlawed had he been,

By England's king and Scotland's queen.

But he was never taken, and had no occasion for his

----neck-verse at Hairibee,

even if he could have read it. Poulailler was arrested no less than

five times, and five times did he break his bonds. Like Jack Sheppard

and Claude du Val, he owed his escape in most instances to the frail

fair ones, who would have dared any thing in favor of their favorite,

and who, in Jack's case, joined on one occasion without jealousy in a

successful effort to save him.

Poulailler was quite as much the pet of the petticoats as either of

these hempen heroes. With a fine person and accomplished manners, he

came, saw, and overcame, in more instances than that of the fair

daughter of the Baron von Kirbergen; but, unlike John Sheppard or

Claude Du Val, Poulailler was cruel. Villains as they were, John and

Claude behaved well, after their fashion, to those whom they robbed,

and to the unhappy women with whom they associated. In their case, the

"ladies" did their utmost to save them, and men were not wanting who

endeavored to obtain a remission of their sentence. But Poulailler

owed his fall to a woman whom he had ruined, ill-treated, and scorned.

The ruin and ill-treatment she bore, as the women, poor things, will

bear such atrocities; but the scorn roused all the fury which the

poets, Latin and English, have written of; and his cruelties were so

flagrant, that he could find no man to say, "God bless him."

Wilhelmina von Kirbergen had twice narrowly escaped from a violent

death. Poulailler, in his capricious wrath, once stabbed her with such

murderous will, that she lay a long time on the verge of the grave,

and then recovered to have the strength of her constitution tried by

the strength of a poison which he had administered to her in

insufficient quantities. Henry the Eighth forwarded his wives, when he

was tired of them, to the other world by form of what was in his time

English law; but when Poulailler "felt the fulness of satiety," he got

rid of his mistresses by a much more summary process. But it was not

till this accomplished scoundrel openly left Wilhelmina for a younger

and more beautiful woman, that she, who had given up station, family,

and friends, to link herself with his degrading life, abandoned

herself to revenge.

She wrote to him whom she had loved so long and truly, to implore that

they might once more meet before they parted in peace for ever.

Poulailler, too happy to be freed on such terms, accepted her

invitation, and was received so warmly that he half repented his

villainous conduct, and felt a return of his youthful affection. A

splendid supper gave zest to their animated conversation; but towards

the end of it, Poulailler observed a sudden change in his companion,

who manifested evident symptoms of suffering. Poulailler anxiously

inquired the cause.

"Not much," said she; "a mere trifle--I have poisoned myself, that I

may not survive you."

"Quoi, coquine! m'aurais-tu fait aussi avaler le boucon?" cried the

terrified robber.

"That would not have sufficiently avenged me. Your death would have

been too easy. No, my friend, you will leave this place safe and well;

but it will be to finish the night at the Conciergerie; and,

to-morrow, as they have only to prove your identity, you will finish

your career on the wheel in the Place de Greve."

So saying, she clapped her hands, and, in an instant, before he had

time to move, the Philistines were upon him. Archers and other

officers swarmed from the hangings, door, and windows. For a few

moments, surrounded as he was, his indomitable courage seemed to

render the issue doubtful; but what could one man do against a host

armed to the teeth? He was overpowered, notwithstanding his brave and

vigorous resistance.

His death, however, was not so speedy as his wretched mistress

prophesied that it would be. The love of life prevailed, and in the

hope of gaining time which he might turn to account in effecting his

escape, he promised to make revelations of importance to the state.

The authorities soon found out that he was trifling with them, and the

_procureur-general_, after having caused him to be submitted to the

most excruciating torture, left him to be broken on the wheel alive.

He was executed with all the accursed refinement of barbarity which

disgraced the times; and his tormenters, at last, put the finishing

stroke to his prolonged agonies, by throwing him alive into the fire

that blazed at his feet.

Nothing can justify such penal atrocities. If any thing could,

Poulailler, it must be admitted, had wrought hard to bring down upon

himself the whole sharpness of the law of retaliation. Upwards of one

hundred and fifty persons had been murdered by him and his band.

Resistance seemed to rouse in him and them the fury of devils. Nor was

it only on such occasions that his murderous propensities were

glutted.

At the village of St. Martin, he caused the father, the mother, two

brothers, a newly-married sister, her husband, and four relations, or

friends, to be butchered in cold blood.

One of his band was detected in an attempt to betray him. Poulailler

had him led to a cellar. The traitor was placed upright in an angle of

the wall, gagged, and there they built him in alive. Poulailler, with

his own hand, wrote the sentence and epitaph of the wretch on the soft

plaster; and there it was found some years afterward, when the cellar

in which this diabolical act of vengeance was perpetrated passed into

the hands of a new proprietor.

It was current in the country where Poulailler first saw the light,

and where his father, mother, brethren, and sisters, still lived an

honorable life, embittered only by the horrible celebrity of their

relation, that, on the night which followed the day of Pierre's

execution, the isolated tower, which had been uninhabited since its

last occupant had so mysteriously disappeared, seemed all on fire,

every window remaining illuminated by the glowing element till morning

dawned. During this fearful nocturnal spectacle, it was affirmed that

infernal howlings and harrowing cries proceeded from the apparently

burning mass, and some peasants declared that they heard Pierre

Poulailler's name shouted from the midst of the flames in a voice of

thunder.

The dawn showed the lonely tower unscathed by fire; but a fearful

tempest arose, and raged with ceaseless fury for thrice twenty-four

hours. The violence of the hurricane was such, that it was impossible

during that time for any vessel to keep the sea; and when at length

the storm subsided, the coast was covered with pieces of wreck, while

the waves continued for many days to give up their dead at the base of

the rock, from whose crest frowned _La Tour Maudite_.

From Hogg's Instructor.

THE LATE D. M. MOIR.

BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.

Pleasant and joyous was the circle wont to assemble now and then (not

_every_ night, as the public then fondly dreamed) in Ambrose's, some

twenty-five years ago: not a constellation in all our bright sky, at

present, half so brilliant. There sat John Wilson, "lord of the

lion-heart and eagle-eye," his hair somewhat thicker, and his eye

rather brighter, and his complexion as fresh, and his talk as

powerful, as now. There Lockhart appeared, with his sharp face,

_adunco naso_, keen poignant talk, and absence of all enthusiasm.

There Maginn rollicked and roared, little expecting that he was ever

destined to stand a bankrupt and ruined man over Bunyan's dust, and

cry, "Sleep on, thou Prince of Dreamers!" There De Quincey bowed and

smiled, while interposing his mild but terrible and unanswerable

"buts," and winding the subtle way of his talk through all subjects,

human, infernal, and divine. There appeared the tall military form of

old Syme, alias Timothy Tickler, with his pithy monosyllables, and

determined _nil admirari_ bearing. There the Ettrick Shepherd told his

interminable stories, and drank his interminable tumblers. There sat

sometimes, though seldom, a young man of erect port, mild gray eye,

high head, rich quivering lips, and air of simple dignity, often

forgetting to fill or empty his glass, but never forgetting to look

reverently to the "Professor," curiously and admiringly to De Quincey,

and affectionately to all: it was Thomas Aird. There occasionally

might be seen Macnish of Glasgow, with his broad fun; Doubleday of

Newcastle, then a rising litterateur; Leitch, the ventriloquist, (not

professionally so, and yet not much inferior, we believe, to the

famous Duncan Macmillan); and even a stray Cockney or two who did not

belong to the Cockney school. There, too, the "Director-general of the

Fine Arts," old Bridges, (uncle to our talented friend, William

Bridges, Esq. of London,) was often a guest, with his keen black eye,

finely-formed features, rough, ready talk, and a certain smack audible

on his lips when he spoke of a beautiful picture, a "leading article"

in "Maga," or of some of the queer adventures (_quorum pars fuit_) of

Christopher North. And there, last, not least, was frequently seen the

fine fair-haired head of Delta, the elegant poet, the amiable man, and

the author of one of the quaintest and most delightful of our Scottish

tales, "Mansie Wauch."

That brilliant circle was dissolved long ere we knew any of its

members. We question if it was ever equalled, except thrice: once by

the Scriblerus Club, composed of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, and

Bolingbroke; again by the "Literary Club," with its Johnson, Burke,

Garrick, Beauclerk, Gibbon, and Fox: and more recently by the

"Round-table," with its Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, and their minor

companions. It is now, we need not say, entirely dissolved, although

most of its members are yet alive, and although its doings and sayings

have been of late imitated in certain symposia, reminding us, in

comparison with the past, of the shadowy feasts of the dead beside

real human entertainments. The "nights" of the North are diviner than

the "days."

From this constellation, we mean, at present, to cut out one "bright,

particular star," and to discourse of him. This is Delta, the

delightful. We have not the happiness of Dr. Moir's acquaintance, nor

did we ever see him, save once. It was at the great Edinburgh

Philosophic Feed of 1846, when Macaulay, Whately, and other lions,

young and old, roared, on the whole, rather feebly, and in vulgar

falsetto, over their liberal provender. Delta, too, was a speaker, and

his speech had two merits, at least, modesty and brevity, and

contrasted thus well with Whately's egotistical rigmarole, Macaulay's

labored paradox, and Maclagan's inane bluster. He was, we understood

afterwards, in poor health at the time, and did not do justice to

himself. But we have been long familiar with his poems in "Blackwood"

and the "Dumfries Herald," to which he occasionally contributed. We

remember well when, next to a paper by North, or a poem by Aird, we

looked eagerly for one by Delta in each new number of "Ebony;" and we

now cheerfully proceed to say a few words about his true and exquisite

genius.

We may call Delta the male Mrs. Hemans. Like her, he loved principally

the tender, the soft, and the beautiful. Like her, he excelled in

fugitive verses, and seldom attempted, and still more seldom

succeeded, in the long or the labored poem. Like her, he tried a great

variety of styles and measures. Like her, he ever sought to interweave

a sweet and strong moral with his strains, and to bend them all in by

a graceful curve around the Cross. But, unlike her, his tone was

uniformly glad and genial, and he exhibited none of that morbid

melancholy which lies often like a dark funeral edge around her most

beautiful poems: and this, because he was a _masculine_ shape of the

same elegant genus.

Delta's principal powers were cultured sensibility, fine fancy, good

taste, and an easy, graceful style and versification. He sympathized

with all the "outward forms of sky and earth, with all that was

lovely, and pure, and of a good report" in the heart and the history

of humanity, and particularly with Scottish scenery, and Scottish

character and manners. His poetry was less a distinct power or vein,

than the general result and radiance of all his faculties. These

exhaled out of them a fine genial enthusiasm, which expressed itself

in song. We do not think, with Carlyle, that it is the same with _all_

high poets. _He_ says--"Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats,

where the whole consists in a weak-eyed maudlin sensibility, and a

certain vague tunefulness of nature, is no separate faculty, no organ

which can be superadded to the rest, or disjoined from them, but

rather the result of their general harmony and completion." Now, 1st,

Carlyle is here grossly unjust to Keats. Had the author of Hyperion

nothing but maudlin sensibility? If ever man was devoured, body and

soul, by that passion for, and perception of, the beauty and glory of

the universe, which is the essence of poetry, it was poor Keats. He

was poetry incarnate--the wine of the gods poured into a frail earthy

vessel, which split around it. Nor has Burns, of whom Carlyle is here

writing, left any thing to be compared, in ideal qualities, in depth,

and massiveness, and almost Miltonic magnificence, with the

descriptions of Saturn, and the Palace of the Sun, and the Senate of

the Gods in "Hyperion." Burns was the finest lyrist of his or any age;

but Keats, had he lived, would have been one of the first of _epic_

poets. 2dly, We do not very well comprehend what Carlyle means by the

words "no organ, which can be superadded to, or disjoined from the

rest." If he means that no culture can add, or want of it take away,

poetic faculty, he is clearly right. But, if he means that nature

never confers a poetic vein distinct from, and superior to, the

surrounding faculties of the man, we must remind him of certain

stubborn facts. Gay and Fontaine were "fable-trees," Goldsmith was an

"inspired idiot." Godwin's powerful philosophic and descriptive genius

seemed scarcely connected with the man; he had to _write_ himself

_into_ it, and his friends could hardly believe him the author of his

own works! Even Byron was but a common man, except at his desk, or "on

his stool" as he himself called it. He had to "_call_" his evil spirit

from the vasty deep, and to lash himself very often into inspiration

by a whip of "Gin-_twist_." And James Hogg was little else than a

_haverer_, till he sat down to write poetry, when the "faery queen"

herself seemed to be speaking from within him. Nay, 3dly, we are

convinced that many men, of extraordinary powers otherwise, have in

them a vein of poetry as distinct from the rest as the bag of honey in

the bee is from his sting, his antennae, and his wings, and which

requires some special circumstance or excitement to develop it. Thus

it was, we think, with Burke, Burns, and Carlyle himself. All these

had poetry in them, and have expressed it; but any of them might have

_avoided_, in a great measure, its expression, and might have solely

shone in other spheres. For example, Burke has written several works

full, indeed, of talent, but without a single gleam of that real

imagination which other of his writings display. What a contrast

between his "Thoughts on the Present Discontents," or his "Essay on

the Sublime and Beautiful," (an essay containing not one sublime, and

not two beautiful sentences in it all,) and the "rare and regal"

rhetorical and poetic glories of his "Essay on the French Revolution,"

or his "Letters on a Regicide Peace!" Burns might have been a

philosopher of the Dugald Stewart school, as acute and artificially

eloquent as any of them, had he gone to Edinburgh College instead of

going to Irvine School. Carlyle might have been a prime-minister of a

somewhat original and salvage sort, had it been so ordered. None of

the three were so essentially poetical, that all their thoughts were

"twin-born with poetry," and rushed into the reflection of metaphor,

as the morning beams into the embrace and reflection of the lake. All

were _stung_ into poetry: Burke by political zeal and personal

disappointment, Burns by love, and Carlyle by that white central heat

of dissatisfaction with the world and the things of the world, which

his temperament has compelled him to express, but which his Scottish

common sense has taught him the wisdom of expressing in earnest

masquerade and systematic metaphor. But, 4thly, there is a class of

poets who have possessed more than the full complement of human

faculties, who have added to these extensive accomplishments and

acquirements, and yet who have been so constituted, that imaginative

utterance has been as essential to their thoughts as language itself.

Such were Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, &c., and such

are Wilson, Bailey, Aird, and Yendys. These are "nothing, if not

poetical." All their powers and acquisitions turn instinctively toward

poetic expression, whether in verse or prose. And near them, although

on a somewhat lower plane, stood Delta.

Poetry, with Delta, was rather the natural outflow of his whole soul

and culture combined, than an art or science. His poetry was founded

on feelings, not on principles. Indeed, we fancy that little true

poetry, in any age, has been systematic. It is generally the work of

sudden enthusiasm, wild and rapid ecstasy acting upon a nature

_prefitted_ for receiving the afflatus, whether by gift or by

accomplishment, or by both united. Even the most thoroughly furnished

have been as dependent on moods and happy hours as the least. The wind

of inspiration bloweth where it listeth. Witness Milton and Coleridge,

both of whom were masters of the theory of their art, nay, who had

studied it scientifically, and with a profound knowledge of cognate

sciences, and yet both of whom could only build up the lofty rhyme at

certain seasons, and in certain circumstances, and who frequently

perpetrated sheer dulness and drivel. The poetry of Homer, of

Eschylus, of Lucretius, of Byron, of Shelley, of Festus--in short, the

most of powerful poetry--has owed a vast deal more to excitement and

enthusiasm than to study or elaborate culture. The rhapsodists were

the first, have been the best, and shall be the last of the poets. And

with what principles of poetic art were the bards of Israel

conversant? And what systems of psychology or aesthetics had Shakspeare

studied? And in what college were trained the framers of the

ballad-poetry of the world--the lovers who soothed with song their

burning hearts--the shepherds who sang amid their green

wildernesses--the ploughmen who modulated to verse the motion of their

steers--the kings of the early time who shouted war-poetry from their

chariots--the Berserkars whose long hair curled and shook as though

life were in it, to the music of their wild melodies--and the "men of

sturt and strife," the rough Macpherson-like heroes, whose spirits

sprang away from the midst of flood and flame, from the gallows or the

scaffold, on whirlwinds of extempore music and poetry? Poetry, with

them, was the irresistible expression of passion and of imagination,

and hence its power; and to nothing still, but the same rod, can its

living waters flow amain. Certain fantastic fribbles of the present

day may talk of "principles of art," and "principles of

versification," and the necessity of studying poetry as a science, and

may exhaust the resources of midnight darkness in expressing their

bedrivelled notions; but _our_ principle is this--"Give us a gifted

intellect, and warm true heart, and stir these with the fiery rod of

passion and enthusiasm, and the result will be genuine, and high, and

lasting poetry, as certainly as that light follows the sun."

It may, perhaps, be objected, besides, that Delta has left no large or

great poem. Now, here we trace the presence of another prevalent

fallacy. Largeness is frequently confounded with greatness. But,

because Milton's Paradise Lost is both large and great, it does not

follow that every great poem must be large, any more than that every

large poem must be great. Pollok's Course of Time is a large and a

clever, but scarcely a great poem. Hamlet and Faust may be read each

in an hour, and yet both are great poems. Heraud's Judgment of the

Flood is a vast folio in size, but a very second-rate poem in

substance. Thomas Aird's Devil's Dream covers only four pages, yet who

ever read it without the impression "this is a great effort of

genius." Lalla Rookh was originally a quarto, but, although brilliant

in the extreme, it can hardly be called a poem at all. Burns's Vision

of Liberty contains, in the space of thirty-two lines, we hesitate not

to say, all the elements of a great poem. Although Delta's poems be

not large, it is not a necessary corollary that they are inferior

productions. And if none of them, perhaps, fill up the whole measure

of the term "great," many of them are beautiful, all are genuine, and

some, such as Casa Wappy, are exquisite.

Health is one eminent quality in this pleasing writer. Free

originally from morbid tendencies, he has nursed and cherished this

happy tone of mind by perusing chiefly healthy authors. He has acted

on the principle that the whole should be kept from the sick. He has

dipped but sparingly into the pages of Byron and Shelley, whereas

Wordsworth, Wilson, Southey, and Scott, are the gods of his idolatry.

Scott is transcendently clear. Indeed, we think that he gives to him,

_as a poet_, a place beyond his just deserts. His ease, simplicity,

romantic interest, and Border fire, have blinded him to his faults,

his fatal facility of verse, his looseness of construction, and his

sad want of deep thought and original sentiment. To name him beside or

above Wordsworth, the great consecrated bard of his period, is

certainly a heresy of no small order. One or two of Wordsworth's

little poems, or of his sonnets, are, we venture to say, in genuine

poetical depth and beauty, superior to Scott's _five_ larger poems put

together. _They_ are long, lively, rambling, shallow, and blue,

glittering streams. Wordsworth's ballads are deep and clear as those

mountain pools over which bends the rowan, and on which smiles the

autumn sky, as on the fittest reflector of its own bright profundity

and solemn clearness.