"I see it all," said she. "No doubt Mr. Aldridge gave it to my father to

take care of the night he came here; and when he died, my poor father,

knowing we were to have shared with him had he lived, felt tempted to

keep it; but he was too honest to do so; and in all our distresses he

never touched what was not his own; but this explains many things I

could not understand." And as the tears rose to her eyes at the

recollection of the struggle she had witnessed, without comprehending

it, betwixt want and integrity, she fell into a reverie, which prevented

her observing that her child, a boy of four years old, had taken

possession of the pocket-book, and, seated on the floor, was pulling it

to pieces.

"I tell you what, Mary," said Tracy, returning into the shop, which he

had left for a few minutes, "I'll take the book as it is to Mr. Jonas

Aldridge. I'm sorry the money's lost; but we are not to blame for that,

and I suppose he has plenty. Put it into a bit of clean paper, will you,

and I'll set off at once."

"Oh, Tracy, Tracy," cried Mary, addressing her little boy, "what _are_

you doing with that book? Give it me, you naughty child! See, he has

almost torn it in half!" Not a very difficult feat, for the leather was

so rotten with damp that it scarcely held together.

"Look here, Tracy: here's a paper in it," said Mary, as she took it from

the child, and from the end of a secret pocket, which was unript, she

drew a folded sheet of long writing-paper.

"Dear me! look here!" said she, as she unfolded and cast her eye over

it. "'In the name of God, amen! I, Ephraim Aldridge, residing at No. 4,

West Street, being of sound mind, memory, and understanding'----Why,

Tracy, it's a will, I declare! Only think, How odd! isn't it? 'Of sound

mind, memory, and understanding, do make and publish this my last will

and testament'"----

"I'll tell you what, Mary," said Tracy, attempting to take the paper

from her, "I don't think we've any right to read it: give it me."

"Stay," said Mary; "stay. Oh, Tracy, do but listen to this: 'I

give, devise, and bequeath all property, of what nature or kind

soever, real, freehold, or personal, of which I shall die seized or

possessed'----Think what a deal Mr. Jonas must have!"

"Mary, I'm surprised at you."

"'Of which I shall die seized or possessed, to my nephew'"----

"It's merely the draft of a will. Give it me, and let me go."

"'To my nephew, Tracy Walkingham, son of the late Tracy Walkingham,

formerly a private, and subsequently a commissioned officer in his

majesty's 96th Regiment of foot, and of my sister, Eleanor Aldridge, his

wife.' Tracy, what can it mean? Can you be Mr. Ephraim Aldridge's

nephew?"

"It's very strange," said Tracy. "I never heard my mother's maiden name;

for both she and my father died in the West Indies when I was a child;

but certainly, as I have often told you, my father was a private in the

96th Regiment, and afterward got a commission."

It would be useless to dwell on the surprise of the young couple, or to

detail the measures that were taken to ascertain and prove, beyond a

cavil, that Tracy was the right heir. There were relations yet alive

who, when they heard that he was likely to turn out a rich man, were

willing enough to identify him, and it was not till the solicitor he had

employed was perfectly satisfied on this head that Mr. Jonas was waited

on, with the astounding intelligence that a will had been discovered,

made subsequent to the one by which he inherited. At the same time a

letter was handed to him, which, sealed and addressed in Ephraim's hand,

had been found in the same secret receptacle of the book as the larger

paper.

The contents of that letter none ever knew but Jonas himself. It seemed

to have been a voice of reproach from the grave for the ill return he

had made to the perhaps injudicious but well-meant generosity and

indulgence of the old man. The lawyer related that when he opened it he

turned deadly pale, and placing his hands before his face, sank into a

chair quite overcome: let us hope his heart was touched.

However that may be, he had no reason to complain of the treatment he

received from the hands of his successors, who temperate in prosperity,

as they had been patient in adversity, in consideration of the

relationship and of the expectations in which he had been nurtured, made

Jonas a present of a thousand pounds for the purpose of establishing him

in any way of life he might select; while, carefully preserved in a

leathern case, the old black pocket-book, to which they owed so much, is

still extant in the family of Tracy Walkingham.

[Abridged from "Light and Darkness," just published.]

THE LAST VAMPIRE.

BY MRS. CROWE.

In the fifteenth century lycanthropy prevailed extensively amongst the

Vaudois, and many persons suffered death for it; but as no similar case

seems to have been heard of for a long while, lycanthropy and ghoulism

were set down amongst the superstitions of the East, and the follies and

fables of the dark ages. A circumstance however has just come to light

in France that throws a strange and unexpected light upon this curious

subject. The account we are going to give is drawn from a report of the

investigation before a council of war, held on the 10th of the present

month (July, 1849), Colonel Manselon, president. It is remarked that the

court was extremely crowded, and that many ladies were present.

The facts of this mysterious affair, as they came to light in the

examinations, are as follows: For some months past the cemeteries in and

around Paris have been the scenes of a frightful profanation, the

authors of which had succeeded in eluding all the vigilance that was

exerted to detect them. At one time the guardians or keepers of these

places of burial were themselves suspected; at others the odium was

thrown on the surviving relations of the dead.

The cemetery of Pere la Chaise was the first field of these horrible

operations. It appears that for a considerable time the guardians had

observed a mysterious figure flitting about by night amongst the tombs,

on whom they never could lay their hands. As they approached, he

disappeared like a phantom; and even the dogs that were let loose, and

urged to seize him, stopped short, and ceased to bark, as if they were

transfixed by a charm. When morning broke, the ravages of this strange

visitant were but too visible--graves had been opened, coffins forced,

and the remains of the dead, frightfully torn and mutilated, lay

scattered upon the earth. Could the surgeons be the guilty parties? No.

A member of the profession being brought to the spot declared that no

scientific knife had been there; but certain parts of the human body

might be required for anatomical studies, and the gravediggers might

have violated the tombs to obtain money by the sale of them. The watch

was doubled, but to no purpose. A young soldier was one night seized in

a tomb, but he declared he had gone there to meet his sweetheart, and

had fallen asleep; and as he evinced no trepidation they let him go.

At length these profanations ceased in Pere la Chaise, but it was not

long before they were renewed in another quarter. A suburban cemetery

was the new theater of operations. A little girl aged seven years, and

much loved by her parents, died. With their own hands they laid her in

her coffin, attired in the frock she delighted to wear on _fete_ days,

and with her favorite playthings beside her; and accompanied by numerous

relatives and friends they saw her laid in the earth. On the following

morning it was discovered that the grave had been violated, the body

torn from the coffin, frightfully mutilated, and the heart extracted.

There was no robbery. The sensation in the neighborhood was tremendous;

and in the general terror and perplexity suspicion fell on the

broken-hearted father, whose innocence however was easily proved. Every

means was taken to discover the criminal; but the only result of the

increased surveillance was that the scene of profanation was removed to

the cemetery of Mont Parnasse, where the exhumations were carried to

such an extent that the authorities were at their wits' end.

Considering, by the way, that all these cemeteries are surrounded by

walls, and have iron gates, which are kept closed, it certainly seems

very strange that any ghoul or vampire of solid flesh and blood should

have been able to pursue his vocation so long undiscovered. However, so

it was; and it was not till they bethought themselves of laying a snare

for this mysterious visitor that he was detected. Having remarked a spot

where the wall, though nine feet high, appeared to have been frequently

scaled, an old officer contrived a sort of infernal machine, with a wire

attached to it, which he so arranged that it should explode if any one

attempted to enter the cemetery at that point. This done, and a watch

being set, they thought themselves now secure of their purpose.

Accordingly, at midnight an explosion roused the guardians, who

perceived a man already in the cemetery; but before they could seize him

he had leaped the wall with an agility that confounded them; and

although they fired their pieces after him, he succeeded in making his

escape. But his footsteps were marked with blood that had flowed from

his wounds, and several scraps of military attire were picked up on the

spot. Nevertheless, they seem to have been still uncertain where to seek

the offender, till one of the gravediggers of Mont Parnasse, whilst

preparing the last resting-place of two criminals about to be executed,

chanced to overhear some sappers of the 74th regiment remarking that one

of their sergeants had returned on the preceding night cruelly wounded,

nobody knew how, and had been conveyed to Val de Grace, which is a

military hospital. A little inquiry now soon cleared up the mystery; and

it was ascertained that Sergeant Bertrand was the author of all these

profanations, and of many others of the same description previous to his

arrival in Paris.

Supported on crutches, wrapped in a gray cloak, pale and feeble,

Bertrand was now brought forward for examination; nor was there anything

in the countenance or appearance of this young man indicative of the

fearful monomania of which he is the victim; for the whole tenor of his

confession proves that in no other light is his horrible propensity to

be considered. In the first place, he freely acknowledged himself the

author of these violations of the dead both in Paris and elsewhere.

"What object did you propose to yourself in committing these acts?"

"I cannot tell," replied Bertrand: "it was a horrible impulse. I was

driven to it against my own will; nothing could stop or deter me. I

cannot describe or understand myself what my sensations were in tearing

and rending these bodies."

President.--"And what did you do after one of these visits to a

cemetery?"

Bertrand.--"I withdrew, trembling convulsively, feeling a great desire

for repose. I fell asleep, no matter where, and slept for several hours;

but during this sleep I heard everything that passed around me! I have

sometimes exhumed from ten to fifteen bodies in a night. I dug them up

with my hands, which were often torn and bleeding with the labor I

underwent; but I minded nothing, so that I could get at them. The

guardians fired at me one night and wounded me, but that did not prevent

my returning the next. This desire seized me generally about once a

fortnight."

Strange to say, the perpetrator of all these terrors was "gentle and

kind to the living, and especially beloved in his regiment for his

frankness and gayety."

[From Blackwood's Magazine.]

MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

_Continued from Page 582._

BOOK II.--INITIAL CHAPTER:--INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO

HAVE INITIAL CHAPTERS.

"There can't be a doubt," said my father, "that to each of the main

divisions of your work--whether you call them Books or Parts--you should

prefix an Initial or Introductory Chapter."

_Pisistratus._--"Can't be a doubt, sir! Why so?"

_Mr. Caxton._--"Fielding lays it down as an indispensable rule, which he

supports by his example; and Fielding was an artistical writer, and knew

what he was about."

_Pisistratus._--"Do you remember any of his reasons, sir?"

_Mr. Caxton._--"Why, indeed, Fielding says very justly that he is not

bound to assign any reason; but he does assign a good many, here and

there--to find which, I refer you to _Tom Jones_. I will only observe,

that one of his reasons, which is unanswerable, runs to the effect that

thus, in every Part or Book, the reader has the advantage of beginning

at the fourth or fifth page instead of the first--'a matter by no means

of trivial consequence,' saith Fielding, 'to persons who read books with

no other view than to say they have read them--a more general motive to

reading than is commonly imagined; and from which not only law books and

good books, but the pages of Homer and Virgil, of Swift and Cervantes,

have been often turned over.' There," cried my father triumphantly, "I

will lay a shilling to twopence that I have quoted the very words."

_Mrs. Caxton._--"Dear me, that only means skipping: I don't see any

great advantage in writing a chapter, merely for people to skip it."

_Pisistratus._--"Neither do I!"

_Mr. Caxton_, dogmatically.--"It is the repose in the picture--Fielding

calls it 'contrast'--(still more dogmatically) I say there can't be a

doubt about it. Besides, (added my father after a pause,) besides, this

usage gives you opportunities to explain what has gone before, or to

prepare for what's coming; or, since Fielding contends with great truth,

that some learning is necessary for this kind of historical composition,

it allows you, naturally and easily, the introduction of light and

pleasant ornaments of that nature. At each flight in the terrace, you

may give the eye the relief of an urn or a statue. Moreover, when so

inclined, you create proper pausing places for reflection; and complete,

by a separate yet harmonious ethical department, the design of a work,

which is but a mere Mother Goose's tale if it does not embrace a general

view of the thoughts and actions of mankind."

_Pisistratus._--"But then, in these initial chapters, the author thrusts

himself forward; and just when you want to get on with the _dramatis

personae_, you find yourself face to face with the poet himself."

_Mr. Caxton._--"Pooh! you can contrive to prevent that! Imitate the

chorus of the Greek stage, who fill up the intervals between the action

by saying what the author would otherwise say in his own person."

_Pisistratus_, slily.--"That's a good idea, sir--and I have a chorus,

and a choraegus too, already in my eye."

_Mr. Caxton_, unsuspectingly.--"Aha! you are not so dull a fellow as you

would make yourself out to be; and, even if an author did thrust himself

forward, what objection is there to that?--I don't say a good poem, but

a poem. It is a mere affectation to suppose that a book can come into

the world without an author. Every child has a father, one father at

least, as the great Conde says very well in his poem."

_Pisistratus._--"The great Conde a poet!--I never heard that before."

_Mr. Caxton._--"I don't say he was a poet, but he sent a poem to Madame

de Montansier. Envious critics think that he must have paid somebody

else to write it; but there is no reason why a great Captain should not

write a poem. I wonder, Roland, if the Duke ever tried his hand at

'Stanzas to Mary,' or 'Lines to a sleeping babe.'"

_Captain Roland._--"Austin, I'm ashamed of you. Of course the Duke could

write poetry if he pleased--something, I dare say, in the way of the

great Conde--that is something warlike and heroic, I'll be bound. Let's

hear!"

_Mr. Caxton_, reciting--

"Telle est du Ciel la loi severe

Qu'il faut qu'un enfant ait un pere;

On dit meme quelque fois

Tel enfant en a jusqu'a trois."

_Captain Roland_, greatly disgusted.--"Conde write such stuff!--I don't

believe it."

_Pisistratus._--"I do, and accept the quotation--you and Roland shall be

joint fathers to my child as well as myself."

"Tel enfant en a jusqu'a trois."

_Mr. Caxton_, solemnly.--"I refuse the proffered paternity; but so far

as administering a little wholesome castigation, now and then, have no

objection to join in the discharge of a father's duty."

_Pisistratus._--"Agreed; have you anything to say against the infant

hitherto?"

_Mr. Caxton._--"He is in long clothes at present; let us wait till he

can walk."

_Blanche._--"But pray whom do you mean for a hero?--and is Miss Jemima

your heroine?"

_Captain Roland._--"There is some mystery about the--"

_Pisistratus_, hastily.--"Hush, Uncle; no letting the cat out of the bag

yet. Listen, all of you! I left Frank Hazeldean on his way to the

Casino."

CHAPTER II.

"It is a sweet pretty place," thought Frank, as he opened the gate which

led across the fields to the Casino, that smiled down upon him with its

plaster pilasters. "I wonder, though, that my father, who is so

particular in general, suffers the carriage road to be so full of holes

and weeds. Mounseer does not receive many visits, I take it."

But when Frank got into the ground immediately before the house, he saw

no cause of complaint as to want of order and repair. Nothing could be

kept more neatly. Frank was ashamed of the dint made by the pony's hoofs

in the smooth gravel; he dismounted, tied the animal to the wicket, and

went on foot toward the glass door in front.

He rang the bell once, twice, but nobody came, for the old

woman-servant, who was hard of hearing, was far away in the yard,

searching for any eggs which the hen might have scandalously hidden from

culinary purposes; and Jackeymo was fishing for the sticklebacks and

minnows, which were, when caught, to assist the eggs, when found, in

keeping together the bodies and souls of himself and his master. The old

woman was on board wages,--lucky old woman! Frank rang a third time, and

with the impetuosity of his age. A face peeped from the Belvidere on the

terrace. "Diavolo!" said Dr. Riccabocca to himself. "Young cocks crow

hard on their own dunghill; it must be a cock of a high race to crow so

loud at another's."

Therewith he shambled out of the summer-house, and appeared suddenly

before Frank, in a very wizard-like dressing-robe of black serge, a red

cap on his head, and a cloud of smoke coming rapidly from his lips, as a

final consolatory whiff, before he removed the pipe from them. Frank had

indeed seen the Doctor before, but never in so scholastic a costume, and

he was a little startled by the apparition at his elbow, as he turned

round.

"Signorino--young gentleman," said the Italian, taking off his cap with

his usual urbanity, "pardon the negligence of my people--I am too happy

to receive your commands in person."

"Dr. Rickeybockey?" stammered Frank, much confused by this polite

address, and the low yet stately bow with which it was accompanied,

"I--I have a note from the Hall. Mamma--that is, my mother,--and aunt

Jemima beg their best compliments, and hope you will come, sir."

The Doctor took the note with another bow, and, opening the glass door,

invited Frank in.

The young gentleman, with a school-boy's usual bluntness, was about to

say that he was in a hurry, and had rather not; but Dr. Riccabocca's

grand manner awed him, while a glimpse of the hall excited his

curiosity--so he silently obeyed the invitation.

The hall, which was of an octagon shape, had been originally paneled off

into compartments, and in these the Italian had painted landscapes, rich

with the warm sunny light of his native climate. Frank was no judge of

the art displayed; but he was greatly struck with the scenes depicted:

they were all views of some lake, real or imaginary--in all, dark-blue

shining waters reflected dark-blue placid skies. In one, a flight of

steps descended to the lake, and a gay group was seen feasting on the

margin; in another, sunset threw its rose-hues over a vast villa or

palace, backed by Alpine hills, and flanked by long arcades of vines,

while pleasure-boats skimmed over the waves below. In short, throughout

all the eight compartments, the scene, though it differed in details,

preserved the same general character, as if illustrating some favorite

locality. The Italian did not, however, evince any desire to do the

honors to his own art, but, preceding Frank across the hall, opened the

door of his usual sitting-room, and requested him to enter. Frank did

so, rather reluctantly, and seated himself with unwonted bashfulness on

the edge of a chair. But here new specimens of the Doctor's handicraft

soon riveted attention. The room had been originally papered; but

Riccabocca had stretched canvas over the walls, and painted thereon

sundry satirical devices, each separated from the other by scroll-works

of fantastic arabesques. Here a Cupid was trundling a wheel-barrow full

of hearts which he appeared to be selling to an ugly old fellow, with a

money-bag in his hand--probably Plutus. There Diogenes might be seen

walking through a market-place, with his lantern in his hand, in search

of an honest man, whilst the children jeered at him, and the curs

snapped at his heels. In another place, a lion was seen half dressed in

a fox's hide, while a wolf in a sheep's mask was conversing very

amicably with a young lamb. Here again might be seen the geese

stretching out their necks from the Roman Capitol in full cackle, while

the stout invaders were beheld in the distance, running off as hard as

they could. In short, in all these quaint entablatures some pithy

sarcasm was symbolically conveyed; only over the mantlepiece was the

design graver and more touching. It was the figure of a man in a

pilgrim's garb, chained to the earth by small but innumerable ligaments,

while a phantom likeness of himself, his shadow, was seen hastening down

what seemed an interminable vista; and underneath were written the

pathetic words of Horace--

"Patriae quis exul

Se quoque fugit?"

--"What exile from his country can fly himself as well?" The furniture

of the room was extremely simple, and somewhat scanty; yet it was

arranged so as to impart an air of taste and elegance to the room. Even

a few plaster busts and statues, though bought but of some humble

itinerant, had their classical effect, glistening from out stands of

flowers that were grouped around them, or backed by graceful

screen-works formed from twisted osiers, which, by the simple

contrivance of trays at the bottom, filled with earth, served for living

parasitical plants, with gay flowers contrasting thick ivy leaves, and

gave to the whole room the aspect of a bower.

"May I ask your permission?" said the Italian, with his finger on the

seal of the letter.

"Oh yes," said Frank with _naivete_.

Riccabocca broke the seal, and a slight smile stole over his

countenance. Then he turned a little aside from Frank, shaded his face

with his hand, and seemed to muse. "Mrs. Hazeldean," said he at last,

"does me very great honor. I hardly recognize her handwriting, or I

should have been more impatient to open the letter." The dark eyes were

lifted over the spectacles, and went right into Frank's unprotected and

undiplomatic heart. The Doctor raised the note, and pointed to the

characters with his forefinger.

"Cousin Jemima's hand," said Frank, as directly as if the question had

been put to him.

The Italian smiled. "Mr. Hazeldean has company staying with him?"

"No; that is, only Barney--the Captain. There's seldom much company

before the shooting season," added Frank with a slight sigh; "and then

you know the holidays are over. For my part, I think we ought to break

up a month later."

The Doctor seemed reassured by the first sentence in Frank's reply, and

seating himself at the table, wrote his answer--not hastily, as we

English write, but with care and precision, like one accustomed to weigh

the nature of words--in that stiff Italian hand, which allows the writer

so much time to think while he forms his letters. He did not therefore

reply at once to Frank's remark about the holidays, but was silent till

he had concluded his note, read it three times over, sealed it by the

taper he slowly lighted, and then, giving it to Frank, he said--

"For your sake, young gentleman, I regret that your holidays are so

early; for mine, I must rejoice, since I accept the kind invitation you

have rendered doubly gratifying by bringing it yourself."

"Deuce take the fellow and his fine speeches! One don't know which way

to look," thought English Frank.

The Italian smiled again, as if this time he had read the boy's heart,

without need of those piercing black eyes, and said, less ceremoniously

than before, "You don't care much for compliments, young gentleman?"

"No, I don't indeed," said Frank heartily.

"So much the better for you, since your way in the world is made: it

would be so much the worse if you had to make it!"

Frank looked puzzled: the thought was too deep for him--so he turned to

the pictures.

"Those are very funny," said he: "they seem capitally done--who did

'em?"

"Signorino Hazeldean, you are giving me what you refused yourself."

"Eh?" said Frank inquiringly.

"Compliments!"

"Oh--I--no; but they are well done, aren't they, sir?"

"Not particularly: you speak to the artist."

"What! you painted them?"

"Yes."

"And the pictures in the hall?"

"Those too."

"Taken from nature--eh?"

"Nature," said the Italian sententiously, perhaps evasively, "let

nothing be taken from her."

"Oh!" said Frank, puzzled again.

"Well, I must wish you good morning, sir; I am very glad you are

coming."

"Without compliment?"

"Without compliment."

"_A rivedersi_--good-by for the present, my young signorino. This way,"

observing Frank make a bolt toward the wrong door.

"Can I offer you a glass of wine--it is pure, of our own making?"

"No, thank you, indeed, sir," cried Frank, suddenly recollecting his

father's admonition. "Good-by--don't trouble yourself, sir; I know my

way now."

But the bland Italian followed his guest to the wicket, where Frank had

left the pony. The young gentleman, afraid lest so courteous a host

should hold the stirrup for him, twitched off the bridle, and mounted in

haste, not even staying to ask if the Italian could put him in the way

to Rood Hall, of which way he was profoundly ignorant. The Italian's eye

followed the boy as he rode up the ascent in the lane, and the Doctor

sighed heavily. "The wiser we grow," said he to himself, "the more we

regret the age of our follies: it is better to gallop with a light heart

up the stony hill than sit in the summer-house and cry 'How true!' to

the stony truths of Machiavelli!"

With that he turned back into the Belvidere; but he could not resume his

studies. He remained some minutes gazing on the prospect, till the

prospect reminded him of the fields which Jackeymo was bent on his

hiring, and the fields reminded him of Lenny Fairfield. He walked back

to the house, and in a few moments reemerged in his out-of-door trim,

with cloak and umbrella, relighted his pipe, and strolled toward

Hazeldean village.

Meanwhile Frank, after cantering on for some distance, stopped at a

cottage, and there learned that there was a short cut across the fields

to Rood Hall, by which he could save nearly three miles. Frank however

missed the short cut, and came out into the highroad. A turnpike-keeper,

after first taking his toll, put him back again into the short cut, and

finally he got into some green lanes, where a dilapidated finger-post

directed him to Rood. Late at noon, having ridden fifteen miles in the

desire to reduce ten to seven, he came suddenly upon a wild and

primitive piece of ground, that seemed half chase, half common, with

slovenly tumble-down cottages of villainous aspect scattered about in

odd nooks and corners; idle dirty children were making mud-pies on the

road; slovenly-looking children were plaiting straw at the thresholds; a

large but forlorn and decayed church, that seemed to say that the

generation which saw it built was more pious than the generation which

now resorted to it, stood boldly and nakedly out by the road-side.

"Is this the village of Rood?" asked Frank of a stout young man

breaking stones on the road--sad sign that no better labor could be

found for him!

The man sullenly nodded, and continued his work.

"And where's the Hall--Mr. Leslie's?"

The man looked up in stolid surprise, and this time touched his hat.

"Be you going there?"

"Yes, if I can find out where it is."

"I'll show your honor," said the boor alertly.

Frank reined in the pony, and the man walked by his side.

Frank was much of his father's son, despite the difference of age, and

that more fastidious change of manner which characterizes each

succeeding race in the progress of civilization. Despite all his Eton

finery, he was familiar with peasants, and had the quick eye of one

country-born as to country matters.

"You don't seem very well off in this village, my man," said he

knowingly.

"Noa; there be a deal of distress here in the winter time, and summer

too, for that matter; and the parish ben't much help to a single man."

"But the farmers want work here as well as elsewhere, I suppose?"

"Deed, and there ben't much farming work here--most o' the parish be all

wild ground loike."

"The poor have a right of common, I suppose," said Frank, surveying a

large assortment of vagabond birds and quadrupeds.

"Yes; neighbor Timmins keeps his geese on the common, and some has a

cow--and them be neighbor Jowlas's pigs. I don't know if there's a

right, loike; but the folks at the Hall does all they can to help us,

and that ben't much: they ben't as rich as some folks; but," added the

peasant proudly, "they be as good blood as any in the shire."

"I'm glad to see you like them, at all events."

"Oh yes, I likes them well eno'; mayhap you are at school with the young

gentleman?"

"Yes," said Frank.

"Ah! I heard the clergyman say as how Master Randal was a mighty clever

lad, and would get rich some day. I'se sure I wish he would, for a poor

squire makes a poor parish. There's the Hall, sir."

CHAPTER III.

Frank looked right ahead, and saw a square house, that in spite of

modern sash-windows was evidently of remote antiquity--a high conical

roof; a stack of tall quaint chimney-pots of red baked clay (like those

at Sutton Place in Surrey) dominating over isolated vulgar

smoke-conductors of the ignoble fashion of present times; a dilapidated

groin-work, incasing within a Tudor arch a door of the comfortable date

of George III., and the peculiarly dingy and weather-stained appearance

of the small finely-finished bricks, of which the habitation was

built,--all showed the abode of former generations adapted with

tasteless irreverence to the habits of descendants unenlightened by

Pugin, or indifferent to the poetry of the past. The house had emerged

suddenly upon Frank out of the gloomy waste land, for it was placed in a

hollow, and sheltered from sight by a disorderly group of ragged,

dismal, valetudinarian fir-trees, until an abrupt turn of the road

cleared that screen, and left the desolate abode bare to the

discontented eye. Frank dismounted, the man held his pony, and after

smoothing his cravat, the smart Etonian sauntered up to the door, and

startled the solitude of the place with a loud peal from the modern

brass knocker--a knock which instantly brought forth an astonished

starling who had built under the eaves of the gable roof, and called up

a cloud of sparrows, tomtits, and yellow-hammers, who had been regaling

themselves amongst the litter of a slovenly farmyard that lay in full

sight to the right of the house, fenced off by a primitive, paintless

wooden rail. In process of time a sow, accompanied by a thriving and

inquisitive family, strolled up to the gate of the fence, and leaning

her nose on the lower bar of the gate, contemplated the visitor with

much curiosity and some suspicion.

While Frank is still without, impatiently swingeing his white trowsers

with his whip, we will steal a hurried glance toward the respective

members of the family within. Mr. Leslie, the _pater familias_, is in a

little room called his "study," to which he regularly retires every

morning after breakfast, rarely reappearing till one o'clock, which is

his unfashionable hour for dinner. In what mysterious occupations Mr.

Leslie passes those hours no one ever formed a conjecture. At the

present moment he is seated before a little rickety bureau, one leg of

which (being shorter than the other) is propped up by sundry old letters

and scraps of newspapers; and the bureau is open, and reveals a great

number of pigeon-holes and divisions, filled with various odds and ends,

the collection of many years. In some of these compartments are bundles

of letters, very yellow, and tied in packets with faded tape; in

another, all by itself, is a fragment of plum-pudding stone, which Mr.

Leslie has picked up in his walks and considered a rare mineral. It is

neatly labeled, "Found in Hollow Lane, May 21st, 1824, by Maunder Slugge

Leslie, Esq." The next division holds several bits of iron in the shape

of nails, fragments of horse-shoes, &c., which Mr. Leslie had also met

with in his rambles, and according to a harmless popular superstition,

deemed it highly unlucky not to pick up, and once picked up, no less

unlucky to throw away. _Item_, in the adjoining pigeon-hole a goodly

collection of pebbles with holes in them, preserved for the same reason,

in company with a crooked sixpence; _item_, neatly arranged in fanciful

mosaics, several periwinkles, blackamoor's teeth, (I mean the shell so

called,) and other specimens of the conchiferous ingenuity of nature,

partly inherited from some ancestral spinster, partly amassed by Mr.

Leslie himself in a youthful excursion to the sea-side. There were the

farm-bailiff's accounts, several files of bills, an old stirrup, three

sets of knee and shoe-buckles which had belonged to Mr. Leslie's father,

a few seals tied together by a shoe-string, a shagreen toothpick case, a

tortoiseshell magnifying glass to read with, his eldest son's first

copy-books, his second son's ditto, his daughter's ditto, and a lock of

his wife's hair arranged in a true lover's knot, framed and glazed.

There were also a small mousetrap, a patent corkscrew, too good to be

used in common; fragments of a silver teaspoon, that had by natural

decay arrived at a dissolution of its parts; a small brown Holland bag,

containing half-pence of various dates, as far back as Queen Anne,

accompanied by two French _sous_ and a German _silber gros_; the which

miscellany Mr. Leslie magniloquently called "his coins," and had left in

his will as a family heirloom. There were many other curiosities of

congenial nature and equal value--"_quae nunc describere longum est_."

Mr. Leslie was engaged at this time in what is termed "putting things to

rights"--an occupation he performed with exemplary care once a week.

This was his day; and he had just counted his coins, and was slowly

tying them up again, when Frank's knock reached his ears.

Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie paused, shook his head as if incredulously,

and was about to resume his occupation, when he was seized with a fit of

yawning which prevented the bag being tied for full two minutes.

While such the employment of the study--let us turn to the recreations

in the drawing-room, or rather parlor. A drawing-room there was on the

first floor, with a charming look-out, not on the dreary fir-trees, but

on the romantic undulating forest-land; but the drawing-room had not

been used since the death of the last Mrs. Leslie. It was deemed too

good to sit in, except when there was company; there never being

company, it was never sat in. Indeed, now the paper was falling off the

walls with the damp, and the rats, mice, and moths--those "_edaces

rerum_"--had eaten, between them, most of the chair-bottoms and a

considerable part of the floor. Therefore the parlor was the sole

general sitting-room; and being breakfasted in, dined and supped in,

and, after supper, smoked in by Mr. Leslie to the accompaniment of rum

and water, it is impossible to deny that it had what is called "a

smell"--a comfortable wholesome family smell--speaking of numbers,

meals, and miscellaneous social habitation. There were two windows; one

looked full on the fir-trees; the other on the farmyard with the pigsty

closing the view. Near the fir-tree window sat Mrs. Leslie; before her

on a high stool, was a basket of the children's clothes that wanted

mending. A work-table of rosewood inlaid with brass, which had been a

wedding present, and was a costly thing originally but in that peculiar

taste which is vulgarly called "Brumagem," stood at hand: the brass had

started in several places, and occasionally made great havoc on the

childrens' fingers and Mrs. Leslie's gown; in fact, it was the liveliest

piece of furniture in the house, thanks to that petulant brass-work, and

could not have been more mischievous if it had been a monkey. Upon the

work-table lay a housewife and thimble, and scissors and skeins of

worsted and thread, and little scraps of linen and cloth for patches.

But Mrs. Leslie was not actually working--she was preparing to work; she

had been preparing to work for the last hour and a half. Upon her lap

she supported a novel, by a lady who wrote much for a former generation,

under the name of "Mrs. Bridget Blue Mantle." She had a small needle in

her left hand, and a very thick piece of thread in her right;

occasionally she applied the end of the said thread to her lips, and

then--her eyes fixed on the novel--made a blind vacillating attack at

the eye of the needle. But a camel would have gone through it with quite

as much ease. Nor did the novel alone engage Mrs. Leslie's attention,

for ever and anon she interrupted herself to scold the children; to

inquire "what o'clock it was;" to observe that "Sarah would never suit,"

and to wonder why Mr. Leslie would not see that the work-table was

mended. Mrs. Leslie had been rather a pretty woman. In spite of a dress

at once slatternly and economical, she has still the air of a

lady--rather too much so, the hard duties of her situation considered.

She is proud of the antiquity of her family on both sides; her mother

was of the venerable stock of the Daudlers of Daudle Place, a race that

existed before the Conquest. Indeed, one has only to read our earliest

chronicles, and to glance over some of those long-winded moralizing

poems which delighted the thanes and ealdermen of old, in order to see

that the Daudles must have been a very influential family before William

the First turned the country topsy-turvy. While the mother's race was

thus indubitably Saxon, the father's had not only the name but the

peculiar idiosyncracy of the Normans, and went far to establish that

crotchet of the brilliant author of _Sybil, or the Two Nations_, as to

the continued distinction between the conquering and the conquered

populations. Mrs. Leslie's father boasted the name of Montfydget;

doubtless of the same kith and kin as those great barons Montfichet, who

once owned such broad lands and such turbulent castles. A high-nosed,

thin, nervous, excitable progeny, these same Montfydgets, as the most

troublesome Norman could pretend to be. This fusion of race was notable

to the most ordinary physiognomist in the _physique_ and in the _morale_

of Mrs. Leslie. She had the speculative blue eye of the Saxon, and the

passionate high nose of the Norman; she had the musing donothingness of

the Daudlers, and the reckless have-at-everythingness of the

Montfydgets. At Mrs. Leslie's feet, a little girl with her hair about

her ears, (and beautiful hair it was too) was amusing herself with a

broken-nosed doll. At the far end of the room, before a high desk, sat

Frank's Eton schoolfellow, the eldest son. A minute or two before

Frank's alarum had disturbed the tranquillity of the household, he had

raised his eyes from the books on the desk, to glance at a very tattered

copy of the Greek Testament, in which his brother Oliver had found a

difficulty that he came to Randal to solve. As the young Etonian's face

was turned to the light, your first impression, on seeing it, would have

been melancholy but respectful interest--for the face had already lost

the joyous character of youth--there was a wrinkle between the brows;

and the lines that speak of fatigue were already visible under the eyes

and about the mouth; the complexion was sallow, the lips were pale.

Years of study had already sown, in the delicate organization, the seeds

of many an infirmity and many a pain; but if your look had rested longer

on that countenance, gradually your compassion might have given place to

some feeling uneasy and sinister, a feeling akin to fear. There was in

the whole expression so much of cold calm force, that it belied the

debility of the frame. You saw there the evidence of a mind that was

cultivated, and you felt that in that cultivation there was something

formidable. A notable contrast to this countenance, prematurely worn and

eminently intelligent, was the round healthy face of Oliver, with slow

blue eyes, fixed hard on the penetrating orbs of his brother, as if

trying with might and main to catch from them a gleam of that knowledge

with which they shone clear and frigid as a star.

At Frank's knock, Oliver's slow blue eyes sparkled into animation, and

he sprang from his brother's side. The little girl flung back the hair

from her face, and stared at her mother with a look of wonder and

fright.

The young student knit his brows, and then turned wearily back to his

books.

"Dear me," cried Mrs. Leslie, "who can that possibly be? Oliver, come

from the window, sir, this instant, you will be seen! Juliet, run--ring

the bell--no, go to the stairs, and say, 'not at home.' Not at home on

any account," repeated Mrs. Leslie nervously, for the Montfydget blood

was now in full flow.

In another minute or so, Frank's loud boyish voice was distinctly heard

at the outer door.

Randal slightly started.

"Frank Hazeldean's voice," said he; "I should like to see him, mother."

"See him," repeated Mrs. Leslie in amaze, "see him!--and the room in

this state!"

Randal might have replied that the room was in no worse state than

usual; but he said nothing. A slight flush came and went over his pale

face; and then he leaned his cheek on his hand, and compressed his lips

firmly.

The outer door closed with a sullen inhospitable jar, and a slipshod

female servant entered with a card between her finger and thumb.

"Who is that for?--give it to me, Jenny," cried Mrs. Leslie.

But Jenny shook her head, laid the card on the desk beside Randal, and

vanished without saying a word.

"Oh look, Randal, look up," cried Oliver, who had again rushed to the

window; "such a pretty gray pony!"

Randal did look up; nay, he went deliberately to the window, and gazed a

moment on the high-mettled pony, and the well-dressed, high-spirited

rider. In that moment changes passed over Randal's countenance more

rapidly than clouds over the sky in a gusty day. Now envy and

discontent, with the curled lip and the gloomy scowl; now hope and proud

self-esteem, with the clearing brow, and the lofty smile; and then all

again became cold, firm, and close, as he walked back to his books,

seated himself resolutely, and said half aloud,--"Well, KNOWLEDGE IS

POWER!"

CHAPTER IV.

Mrs. Leslie came up in fidget and in fuss; she leant over Randal's

shoulder and read the card. Written in pen and ink, with an attempt at

imitation of printed Roman character, there appeared first, '_Mr. Frank

Hazeldean_;' but just over these letters, and scribbled hastily and less

legibly in pencil, was--

'Dear Leslie,--sorry you are out--come and see us--_Do!_'

"You will go, Randal?" said Mrs. Leslie after a pause.

"I am not sure."

"Yes, _you_ can go; _you_ have clothes like a gentleman; _you_ can go

anywhere, not like those children;" and Mrs. Leslie glanced almost

spitefully on poor Oliver's coarse threadbare jacket, and little

Juliet's torn frock.

"What I have I owe at present to Mr. Egerton, and I should consult his

wishes; he is not on good terms with these Hazeldeans." Then glancing

toward his brother, who looked mortified, he added with a strange sort

of haughty kindness, "What I may have hereafter, Oliver, I shall owe to

myself; and then, if I rise, I will raise my family."

"Dear Randal," said Mrs. Leslie, fondly kissing him on the forehead,

"what a good heart you have!"

"No, mother; my books don't tell me that it is a good heart that gets on

in the world: it is a hard head," replied Randal with a rude and

scornful candor. "But I can read no more just now; come out, Oliver."

So saying, he slid from his mother's hand and left the room.

When Oliver joined him, Randal was already on the common; and, without

seeming to notice his brother, he continued to walk quickly and with

long strides in profound silence. At length he paused under the shade

of an old oak, that, too old to be of value save for firewood, had

escaped the axe. The tree stood on a knoll, and the spot commanded a

view of the decayed house--the old dilapidated church--the dismal,

dreary village.

"Oliver," said Randal between his teeth, so that his voice had the sound

of a hiss, "it was under this tree that I first resolved to--"

He paused.

"What, Randal?"

"Read hard; knowledge is power!"

"But you are so fond of reading."

"I!" cried Randal. "Do you think, when Woolsey and Thomas-a-Becket

became priests, they were fond of telling their beads and pattering

Aves?--I fond of reading!"

Oliver stared; the historical allusions were beyond his comprehension.

"You know," continued Randal, "that we Leslies were not always the

beggarly poor gentlemen we are now. You know that there is a man who

lives in Grosvenor Square, and is very rich--very. His riches came to

him from a Leslie; that man is my patron, Oliver, and he is very good to

me."

Randal's smile was withering as he spoke. "Come on," he said, after a

pause--"come on." Again the walk was quicker, and the brothers were

silent.

They came at length to a little shallow brook, across which some large

stones had been placed at short intervals, so that the boys walked over

the ford dryshod. "Will you pull me down that bough, Oliver?" said

Randal abruptly, pointing to a tree. Oliver obeyed mechanically; and

Randal, stripping the leaves, and snapping off the twigs, left a fork at

the end; with this he began to remove the stepping stones. "What are you

about, Randal?" asked Oliver, wonderingly.

"We are on the other side of the brook now; and we shall not come back

this way. We don't want the stepping-stones anymore!--away with them!"

CHAPTER V.

The morning after this visit of Frank Hazeldean's to Rood Hall, the

Right Honorable Audley Egerton, member of parliament, privy councillor,

and minister of a high department in the state--just below the rank of

the cabinet--was seated in his library, awaiting the delivery of the

post, before he walked down to his office. In the meanwhile, he sipped

his tea, and glanced over the newspapers with that quick and half

disdainful eye with which your practical man in public life is wont to

regard the abuse or the eulogium of the Fourth Estate.

There is very little likeness between Mr. Egerton and his half-brother;

none indeed, except that they are both of tall stature, and strong,

sinewy, English build. But even in this last they do not resemble each

other; for the Squire's athletic shape is already beginning to expand

into that portly embonpoint which seems the natural development of

contented men as they approach middle life. Audley, on the contrary, is

inclined to be spare; and his figure, though the muscles are as firm as

iron, has enough of the slender to satisfy metropolitan ideas of

elegance. His dress--his look--his _tout ensemble_, are those of the

London man. In the first, there is more attention to fashion than is

usual amongst the busy members of the House of Commons; but then Audley

Egerton had always been something more than a mere busy member of the

House of Commons. He had always been a person of mark in the best

society, and one secret of his success in life has been his high

reputation as 'a gentleman.'

As he now bends over the journals, there is an air of distinction in the

turn of the well-shaped head, with the dark-brown hair--dark in spite of

a reddish tinge--cut close behind, and worn away a little toward the

crown, so as to give additional height to a commanding forehead. His

profile is very handsome, and of that kind of beauty which imposes on

men if it pleases women; and is therefore, unlike that of your mere

pretty fellows, a positive advantage in public life. It is a profile

with large features clearly cut, masculine, and somewhat severe. The

expression of his face is not open, like the Squire's; nor has it the

cold closeness which accompanies the intellectual character of young

Leslie's; but it is reserved and dignified, and significant of

self-control, as should be the physiognomy of a man accustomed to think

before he speaks. When you look at him, you are not surprised to learn

that he is not a florid orator nor a smart debater--he is a "weighty

speaker." He is fairly read, but without any great range either of

ornamental scholarship or constitutional lore. He has not much humor;

but he has that kind of wit which is essential to grave and serious

irony. He has not much imagination, nor remarkable subtilty in

reasoning; but if he does not dazzle, he does not _bore_: he is too much

the man of the world for that. He is considered to have sound sense and

accurate judgment. Withal, as he now lays aside the journals, and his

face relaxes its austerer lines, you will not be astonished to hear that

he is a man who is said to have been greatly beloved by women, and still

to exercise much influence in drawing-rooms and boudoirs. At least no

one was surprised when the great heiress Clementina Leslie, kinswoman

and ward to Lord Lansmere--a young lady who had refused three earls and

the heir-apparent to a dukedom--was declared by her dearest friends to

be dying of love for Audley Egerton.

It had been the natural wish of the Lansmeres that this lady should

marry their son, Lord L'Estrange. But that young gentleman, whose

opinions on matrimony partook of the eccentricity of his general

character, could never be induced to propose, and had, according to the

_on-dits_ of town, been the principal party to make up the match between

Clementina and his friend Audley; for the match required making-up,

despite the predilections of the young heiress. Mr. Egerton had had

scruples of delicacy. He avowed, for the first time, that his fortune

was much less than had been generally supposed, and he did not like the

idea of owing all to a wife, however much he might esteem and admire

her. L'Estrange was with his regiment abroad during the existence of

these scruples; but by letters to his father, and to his cousin

Clementina, he contrived to open and conclude negotiations, while he

argued away Mr. Egerton's objections; and before the year in which

Audley was returned for Lansmere had expired, he received the hand of

the great heiress. The settlement of her fortune, which was chiefly in

the funds, had been unusually advantageous to the husband; for though

the capital was tied up so long as both survived--for the benefit of any

children they might have--yet, in the event of one of the parties dying

without issue by the marriage, the whole passed without limitation to

the survivor. In not only assenting to, but proposing this clause, Miss

Leslie, if she showed a generous trust in Mr. Egerton, inflicted no

positive wrong on her relations; for she had none sufficiently near to

her to warrant their claim to the succession. Her nearest kinsman, and

therefore her natural heir, was Harley L'Estrange; and if he was

contented, no one had a right to complain. The tie of blood between

herself and the Leslies of Rood Hall was, as we shall see presently,

extremely distant.

It was not till after his marriage that Mr. Egerton took an active part

in the business of the House of Commons. He was then at the most

advantageous starting-point for the career of ambition. His words on the

state of the country took importance from his stake in it. His talents

found accessories in the opulence of Grosvenor Square, the dignity of a

princely establishment, the respectability of one firmly settled in

life, the reputation of a fortune in reality very large, and which was

magnified by popular report into the revenues of Croesus. Audley

Egerton succeeded in Parliament beyond the early expectations formed of

him. He took at first that station in the House which it requires tact

to establish, and great knowledge of the world to free from the charge

of impracticability and crotchet, but which, once established, is

peculiarly imposing from the rarity of its independence; that is to say,

the station of the moderate man, who belongs sufficiently to a party to

obtain its support, but is yet sufficiently disengaged from a party to

make his vote and word, on certain questions, matter of anxiety and

speculation.

Professing Toryism, (the word Conservative, which would have suited him

better, was not then known,) he separated himself from the country

party, and always avowed great respect for the opinions of the large

towns. The epithet given to the views of Audley Egerton was

"enlightened." Never too much in advance of the passion of the day, yet

never behind its movement, he had that shrewd calculation of odds which

a consummate mastery of the world sometimes bestows upon

politicians--perceived the chances for and against a certain question

being carried within a certain time, and nicked the question between

wind and water. He was so good a barometer of that changeful weather

called Public Opinion that he might have had a hand in the _Times_

newspaper. He soon quarreled, and purposely, with his Lansmere

constituents--nor had he ever revisited that borough, perhaps because it

was associated with unpleasant reminiscences in the shape of the

Squire's epistolary trimmer, and in that of his own effigies which his

agricultural constituents had burned in the corn-market. But the

speeches which produced such indignation at Lansmere, had delighted one

of the greatest of our commercial towns, which at the next general

election honored him with its representation. In those days, before the

Reform Bill, great commercial towns chose men of high mark for their

members; and a proud station it was for him who was delegated to speak

the voice of the princely merchants of England.

Mrs. Egerton survived her marriage but a few years; she left no

children; two had been born, but died in their first infancy. The

property of the wife, therefore, passed without control or limit to the

husband.

Whatever might have been the grief of the widower, he disdained to

betray it to the world. Indeed, Audley Egerton was a man who had early

taught himself to conceal emotion. He buried himself in the country,

none knew where, for some months: when he returned, there was a deep

wrinkle on his brow; but no change in his habits and avocation, except

that soon afterward he accepted office, and thus became busier than

ever.

Mr. Egerton had always been lavish and magnificent in money matters. A

rich man in public life has many claims on his fortune, and no one

yielded to those claims with an air so regal as Audley Egerton. But

amongst his many liberal actions, there was none which seemed more

worthy of panegyric than the generous favor he extended to the son of

his wife's poor and distant kinsfolks, the Leslies of Rood Hall.

Some four generations back, there had lived a certain Squire Leslie, a

man of large acres and active mind. He had cause to be displeased with

his elder son, and though he did not disinherit him, he left half his

property to a younger.

The younger had capacity and spirit, which justified the paternal

provision. He increased his fortune; lifted himself into notice and

consideration by public services and a noble alliance. His descendants

followed his example, and took rank among the first commoners in

England, till the last male, dying, left his sole heiress and

representative in one daughter, Clementina, afterward married to Mr.

Egerton.

Meanwhile the elder son of the forementioned Squire had muddled and

sotted away much of his share in the Leslie property; and, by low

habits and mean society, lowered in repute his representation of the

name.

His successors imitated him, till nothing was left to Randal's father,

Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie, but the decayed house which was what the

Germans call the _stamm schloss_, or "stem hall" of the race, and the

wretched lands immediately around it.

Still, though all intercourse between the two branches of the family had

ceased, the younger had always felt a respect for the elder, as the head

of the house. And it was supposed that, on her deathbed, Mrs. Egerton

had recommended her impoverished namesakes and kindred to the care of

her husband. For, when he returned to town after Mrs. Egerton's death,

Audley had sent to Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie the sum of L5000, which he

said his wife, leaving no written will, had orally bequeathed as a

legacy to that gentleman; and he requested permission to charge himself

with the education of the eldest son.

Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie might have done great things for his little

property with those five thousand pounds, or even (kept in the three per

cents) the interest would have afforded a material addition to his

comforts. But a neighboring solicitor having caught scent of the legacy,

hunted it down into his own hands, on pretense of having found a capital

investment in a canal. And when the solicitor had got possession of the

five thousand pounds, he went off with them to America.

Meanwhile Randal, placed by Mr. Egerton at an excellent preparatory

school, at first gave no signs of industry or talent; but just before he

left it, there came to the school, as classical tutor, an ambitious

young Oxford man; and his zeal, for he was a capital teacher, produced a

great effect generally on the pupils, and especially on Randal Leslie.

He talked to them much in private on the advantages of learning, and

shortly afterward he exhibited those advantages in his own person; for,

having edited a Greek play with much subtil scholarship, his college,

which some slight irregularities of his had displeased, recalled him to

its venerable bosom by the presentation of a fellowship. After this he

took orders, became a college tutor, distinguished himself yet more by a

treatise on the Greek accent, got a capital living, and was considered

on the highroad to a bishopric. This young man, then, communicated to

Randal the thirst for knowledge; and when the boy went afterward to

Eton, he applied with such earnestness and resolve that his fame soon

reached the ears of Audley; and that person, who had the sympathy for

talent, and yet more for purpose, which often characterizes ambitious

men, went to Eton to see him. From that time Audley evinced great and

almost fatherly interest in the brilliant Etonian; and Randal always

spent with him some days in each vacation.

I have said that Egerton's conduct, with respect to this boy, was more

praiseworthy than most of those generous actions for which he was

renowned, since to this the world gave no applause. What a man does

within the range of his family connections, does not carry with it that

_eclat_ which invests a munificence exhibited on public occasions.

Either people care nothing about it, or tacitly suppose it to be but his

duty. It was true, too, as the Squire had observed, that Randal Leslie

was even less distantly related to the Hazeldeans than to Mrs. Egerton,

since Randal's grandfather had actually married a Miss Hazeldean, (the

highest worldly connection that branch of the family had formed since

the great split I have commemorated.) But Audley Egerton never appeared

aware of that fact. As he was not himself descended from the Hazeldeans,

he never troubled himself about their genealogy; and he took care to

impress it upon the Leslies that his generosity on their behalf was

solely to be ascribed to his respect for his wife's memory and kindred.

Still the Squire had felt as if his "distant brother" implied a rebuke

on his own neglect of these poor Leslies, by the liberality Audley

evinced toward them; and this had made him doubly sore when the name of

Randal Leslie was mentioned. But the fact really was, that the Leslies

of Rood had so shrunk out of all notice that the Squire had actually

forgotten their existence, until Randal became thus indebted to his

brother; and then he felt a pang of remorse that any one save himself,

the head of the Hazeldeans, should lend a helping hand to the grandson

of a Hazeldean.

But having thus, somewhat too tediously, explained the position of

Audley Egerton, whether in the world or in the relation to his young

_protege_, I may now permit him to receive and to read his letters.

CHAPTER VI.

Mr. Egerton glanced over the pile of letters placed beside him, and

first he tore up some, scarcely read, and threw them into the

waste-basket. Public men have such odd out-of-the-way letters that their

waste-baskets are never empty: letters from amateur financiers proposing

new ways to pay off the National Debt; letters from America, (never

free!) asking for autographs; letters from fond mothers in country

villages, recommending some miracle of a son for a place in the king's

service; letters from freethinkers in reproof of bigotry; letters from

bigots in reproof of freethinking; letters signed Brutus Redivivus,

containing the agreeable information that the writer has a dagger for

tyrants, if the Danish claims are not forthwith adjusted; letters signed

Matilda or Caroline, stating that Caroline or Matilda has seen the

public man's portrait at the Exhibition, and that a heart sensible to

its attractions may be found at No. ---- Piccadilly; letters from

beggars, impostors, monomaniacs, speculators, jobbers--all food for the

waste-basket.

From the correspondence thus winnowed, Mr. Egerton first selected those

on business, which he put methodically together in one division of his

pocket-book; and secondly, those of a private nature, which he as

carefully put into another. Of these last there were but three--one from

his steward, one from Harley L'Estrange, one from Randal Leslie. It was

his custom to answer his correspondence at his office; and to his

office, a few minutes afterward, he slowly took his way. Many a

passenger turned back to look again at the firm figure, which, despite

the hot summer day, was buttoned up to the throat; and the black

frock-coat thus worn, well became the erect air, and the deep full chest

of the handsome senator. When he entered Parliament Street, Audley

Egerton was joined by one of his colleagues, also on his way to the

cares of office.

After a few observations on the last debate, this gentleman said--

"By the way, can you dine with me next Saturday, to meet Lansmere? He

comes up to town to vote for us on Monday."

"I had asked some people to dine with me," answered Egerton, "but I will

put them off. I see Lord Lansmere too seldom, to miss any occasion to

meet a man whom I respect so much."

"So seldom! True, he is very little in town; but why don't you go and

see him in the country? Good shooting--pleasant old-fashioned house."

"My dear Westbourne, his house is '_nimium vicina Cremonae_,' close to a

borough in which I have been burned in effigy."

"Ha--ha--yes--I remember you first came into Parliament for that snug

little place; but Lansmere himself never found fault with your votes,

did he?"

"He behaved very handsomely, and said he had not presumed to consider me

his mouthpiece; and then, too, I am so intimate with L'Estrange."

"Is that queer fellow ever coming back to England?"

"He comes, generally every year, for a few days, just to see his father

and mother, and then goes back to the Continent."

"I never meet him."

"He comes in September or October, when you, of course, are not in town,

and it is in town that the Lansmeres meet him."

"Why does he not go to them?"

"A man in England but once a year, and for a few days, has so much to do

in London, I suppose."

"Is he as amusing as ever?"

Egerton nodded.

"So distinguished as he might be!" continued Lord Westbourne.

"So distinguished as he is!" said Egerton formally; "an officer selected

for praise, even in such fields as Quatre Bras and Waterloo; a scholar,

too, of the finest taste; and as an accomplished gentleman, matchless!"

"I like to hear one man praise another so warmly in these ill-natured

days," answered Lord Westbourne. "But still, though L'Estrange is

doubtless all you say, don't you think he rather wastes his life--living

abroad?"

"And trying to be happy, Westbourne? Are you sure it is not we who waste

our lives? But I can't stay to hear your answer. Here we are at the door

of my prison."

"On Saturday, then?"

"On Saturday. Good day."

For the next hour, or more, Mr. Egerton was engaged on the affairs of

the state. He then snatched an interval of leisure, (while awaiting a

report, which he had instructed a clerk to make him,) in order to reply

to his letters. Those on public business were soon dispatched; and

throwing his replies aside, to be sealed by a subordinate hand, he drew

out the letters which he had put apart as private.

He attended first to that of his steward: the steward's letter was long,

the reply was contained in three lines. Pitt himself was scarcely more

negligent of his private interests and concerns than Audley

Egerton--yet, withal, Audley Egerton was said by his enemies to be an

egotist.

The next letter he wrote was to Randal, and that, though longer, was far

from prolix: it ran thus--

"Dear Mr. Leslie,--I appreciate your delicacy in consulting me, whether

you should accept Frank Hazeldean's invitation to call at the Hall.

Since you are asked, I can see no objection to it. I should be sorry if

you appeared to force yourself there; and for the rest, as a general

rule, I think a young man who has his own way to make in life had better

avoid all intimacy with those of his own age who have no kindred objects

nor congenial pursuits.

"As soon as this visit is paid, I wish you to come to London. The report

I receive of your progress at Eton renders it unnecessary, in my

judgment, that you should return there. If your father has no objection,

I propose that you should go to Oxford at the ensuing term. Meanwhile, I

have engaged a gentleman who is a fellow of Baliol, to read with you; he

is of opinion, judging only by your high repute at Eton, that you may at

once obtain a scholarship in that college. If you do so, I shall look

upon your career in life as assured.

Your affectionate friend, and sincere

well-wisher, A.E."

The reader will remark that, in this letter, there is a certain tone of

formality. Mr. Egerton does not call his _protege_ "Dear Randal," as

would seem natural, but coldly and stiffly, "Dear Mr. Leslie." He hints,

also, that the boy has his own way to make in life. Is this meant to

guard against too sanguine notions of inheritance, which his generosity

may have excited?

The letter to Lord L'Estrange was of a very different kind from the

others. It was long, and full of such little scraps of news and gossip

as may interest friends in a foreign land; it was written gaily, and as

with a wish to cheer his friend; you could see that it was a reply to a

melancholy letter; and in the whole tone and spirit there was an

affection, even to tenderness, of which those who most liked Audley

Egerton would have scarcely supposed him capable. Yet, notwithstanding,

there was a kind of constraint in the letter, which perhaps only the

fine tact of a woman would detect. It had not that _abandon_, that

hearty self-outpouring, which you might expect would characterize the

letters of two such friends, who had been boys at school together, and

which did breathe indeed in all the abrupt rambling sentences of his

correspondent. But where was the evidence of the constraint? Egerton is

off-hand enough where his pen runs glibly through paragraphs that relate

to others; it is simply that he says nothing about himself--that he

avoids all reference to the inner world of sentiment and feeling. But

perhaps, after all, the man has no sentiment and feeling! How can you

expect that a steady personage in practical life, whose mornings are

spent in Downing Street, and whose nights are consumed in watching

government bills through committee, can write in the same style as an

idle dreamer amidst the pines of Ravenna or on the banks of Como.

Audley had just finished this epistle, such as it was, when the

attendant in waiting announced the arrival of a deputation from a

provincial trading town, the members of which deputation he had

appointed to meet at two o'clock. There was no office in London at which

deputations were kept waiting less than at that over which Mr. Egerton

presided.

The deputation entered--some score or so of middle-aged,

comfortable-looking persons, who nevertheless had their grievance--and

considered their own interests, and those of the country, menaced by a

certain clause in a bill brought in by Mr. Egerton.

The Mayor of the town was the chief spokesman, and he spoke well--but in

a style to which the dignified official was not accustomed. It was a

slap-dash style--unceremonious, free, and easy--an American style. And,

indeed, there was something altogether in the appearance and bearing of

the Mayor which savored of residence in the Great Republic. He was a

very handsome man, but with a look sharp and domineering--the look of a

man who did not care a straw for president or monarch, and who enjoyed

the liberty to speak his mind, and "wallop his own nigger!"

His fellow-burghers evidently regarded him with great respect; and Mr.

Egerton had penetration enough to perceive that Mr. Mayor must be a rich

man, as well as an eloquent one, to have overcome those impressions of

soreness or jealousy which his tone was calculated to create in the

self-love of his equals.

Mr. Egerton was far too wise to be easily offended by mere manner; and,

though he stared somewhat haughtily when he found his observations

actually pooh-poohed, he was not above being convinced. There was much

sense and much justice in Mr. Mayor's arguments, and the statesman

civilly promised to take them into full consideration.

He then bowed out the deputation; but scarcely had the door closed

before it opened again, and Mr. Mayor presented himself alone, saying

aloud to his companions in the passage, "I forgot something I had to say

to Mr. Egerton; wait below for me."

"Well, Mr. Mayor," said Audley, pointing to a seat, "what else would you

suggest?"

The Mayor looked round to see that the door was closed; and then,

drawing his chair close to Mr. Egerton's, laid his forefinger on that

gentleman's arm, and said, "I think I speak to a man of the world, sir."

Mr. Egerton bowed, and made no reply by word, but he gently removed his

arm from the touch of the forefinger.

_Mr. Mayor._--"You observe, sir, that I did not ask the members whom we

return to Parliament to accompany us. Do better without 'em. You know

they are both in Opposition--out-and-outers."

_Mr. Egerton._--"It is a misfortune which the Government cannot

remember, when the question is whether the trade of the town itself is

to be served or injured."

_Mr. Mayor._--"Well, I guess you speak handsome, sir. But you'd be glad

to have two members to support Ministers after the next election."

_Mr. Egerton_, smilingly.--"Unquestionably, Mr. Mayor."

_Mr. Mayor._--"And I can do it, Mr. Egerton. I may say I have the town

in my pocket; so I ought, I spend a great deal of money in it. Now, you

see, Mr. Egerton, I have passed a part of my life in a land of

liberty--the United States--and I come to the point when I speak to a

man of the world. I am a man of the world myself, sir. And if so be the

Government will do something for me, why, I'll do something for the

Government. Two votes for a free and independent town like ours--that's

something, isn't it?"

_Mr. Egerton_, taken by surprise--"Really I--"

_Mr. Mayor_, advancing his chair still nearer, and interrupting the

official.--"No nonsense, you see, on one side or the other. The fact is

that I have taken it into my head that I should like to be knighted. You

may well look surprised, Mr. Egerton--trumpery thing enough, I dare say;

still every man has his weakness and I should like to be Sir Richard.

Well, if you can get me made Sir Richard, you may just name your two

members for the next election--that is, if they belong to your own set,

enlightened men, up to the times. That's speaking fair and manful, isn't

it?"

_Mr. Egerton_, drawing himself up.--"I am at a loss to guess why you

should select me, sir, for this very extraordinary proposition."

_Mr. Mayor_, nodding good-humoredly.--"Why, you see, I don't go all

along with the Government; you're the best of the bunch. And maybe

you'd like to strengthen your own party. This is quite between you and

me, you understand; honor's a jewel!"

_Mr. Egerton_, with great gravity.--"Sir, I am obliged by your good

opinion; but I agree with my colleagues in all the great questions

affecting the government of the country, and--"

_Mr. Mayor_, interrupting him.--"Ah, of course you must say so; very

right. But I guess things would go differently if you were Prime

Minister. However, I have another reason for speaking to you about my

little job. You see you were member for Lansmere once, and I think you

came in but by two majority, eh?"

_Mr. Egerton._--"I know nothing of the particulars of that election; I

was not present."

_Mr. Mayor._--"No; but, luckily for you, two relatives of mine were, and

they voted for you. Two votes, and you came in by two! Since then, you

have got into very snug quarters here, and I think we have a claim on

you--"

_Mr. Egerton._--"Sir, I acknowledge no such claim; I was and am a

stranger in Lansmere; and, if the electors did me the honor to return me

to Parliament, it was in compliment rather to--"

_Mr. Mayor_, again interrupting the official.--"Rather to Lord Lansmere,

you were going to say; unconstitutional doctrine that, I fancy. Peer of

the realm. But, never mind, I know the world; and I'd ask Lord Lansmere

to do my affair for me, only I hear he is as proud as Lucifer."

_Mr. Egerton_, in great disgust, and settling his papers before

him.--"Sir, it is not in my department to recommend to his Majesty

candidates for the honor of knighthood, and it is still less in my

department to make bargains for seats in Parliament."

_Mr. Mayor._--"Oh, if that's the case, you'll excuse me; I don't know

much of the etiquette in these matters. But I thought that, if I put two

seats in your hands, for your own friends, you might contrive to take

the affair into your department, whatever it was. But since you say you

agree with your colleagues, perhaps it comes to the same thing. Now you

must not suppose I want to sell the town, and that I can change and chop

my politics for my own purpose. No such thing! I don't like the sitting

members; I'm all for progressing, but they go _too_ much ahead for me;

and, since the Government is disposed to move a little, why I'd as lief

support them as not. But, in common gratitude, you see, (added the

Mayor, coaxingly,) I ought to be knighted! I can keep up the dignity,

and do credit to his Majesty."

_Mr. Egerton_, without looking up from his papers.--"I can only refer

you, sir, to the proper quarter."

_Mr. Mayor_, impatiently.--"Proper quarter! Well, since there is so much

humbug in this old country of ours, that one must go through all the

forms and get at the job regularly, just tell me whom I ought to go to."

_Mr. Egerton_, beginning to be amused as well as indignant.--"If you

want a knighthood, Mr. Mayor, you must ask the Prime Minister; if you

want to give the Government information relative to seats in Parliament,

you must introduce yourself to Mr. ----, the Secretary of the Treasury."

_Mr. Mayor._--"And if I go to the last chap, what do you think he'll

say?"

_Mr. Egerton_, the amusement preponderating over the indignation.--"He

will say, I suppose, that you must not put the thing in the light in

which you have put it to me; that the Government will be very proud to

have the confidence of yourself and your brother electors; and that a

gentleman like you, in the proud position of Mayor, may well hope to be

knighted on some fitting occasion. But that you must not talk about the

knighthood just at present, and must confine yourself to converting the

unfortunate political opinions of the town."

_Mr. Mayor._--"Well, I guess that chap there would want to do me! Not

quite so green, Mr. Egerton. Perhaps I'd better go at once to the

fountain-head. How d'ye think the Premier would take it?"

_Mr. Egerton_, the indignation preponderating over the

amusement.--"Probably just as I am about to do."

Mr. Egerton rang the bell; the attendant appeared.

"Show Mr. Mayor the way out," said the Minister.

The Mayor turned round sharply, and his face was purple. He walked

straight to the door; but, suffering the attendant to precede him along

the corridor, he came back with rapid stride, and clinching his hands,

and with a voice thick with passion, cried, "Some day or other I will

make you smart for this, as sure as my name's Dick Avenel!"

"Avenel!" repeated Egerton, recoiling, "Avenel!"

But the Mayor was gone.

Audley fell into a deep and musing reverie which seemed gloomy, and

lasted till the attendant announced that the horses were at the door.

He then looked up, still abstractedly, and saw his letter to Harley

L'Estrange open on the table. He drew it toward him, and wrote, "A man

has just left me, who calls himself Aven--" in the middle of the name

his pen stopped. "No, no," muttered the writer, "what folly to reopen

the old wounds there," and he carefully erased the words.

Audley Egerton did not ride in the park that day, as was his wont, but

dismissed his groom; and, turning his horse's head toward Westminster

Bridge, took his solitary way into the country. He rode at first slowly,

as if in thought; then fast, as if trying to escape from thought. He was

later than usual at the House that evening, and he looked pale and

fatigued. But he had to speak, and he spoke well.

TO BE CONTINUED.

[From the Journal des Chasseurs.]

WILD SPORTS IN ALGERIA.

BY M. JULES GERARD.

I knew of a large old lion in the Smauls country and betook myself in

that direction. On arriving I heard that he was in the Bonarif, near

Batnah. My tent was not yet pitched at the foot of the mountain, when I

learned that he was at the Fed Jong, where, on my arrival, I found he

had gained the Aures. After traveling one hundred leagues in ten days in

the trace of my brute without catching a glimpse of anything but his

footprints, I was gratified on the night of the 22d of August with the

sound of my lord's voice. I had established my tent in the valley of

Ousten. As there is only one path across this thickly covered valley, I

found it an easy task to discover his track and follow it to his lair.

At six o'clock in the evening I alighted upon a hillock commanding a

prospect of the country around. I was accompanied by a native of the

country and my spahi, one carrying my carbine, the other my old gun. As

I had anticipated, the lion roared under cover at dawn of day; but

instead of advancing toward me, he started off in a westerly direction

at such a pace that it was impossible for me to come up with him. I

retraced my steps at midnight and took up my quarters at the foot of a

tree upon the path which the lion had taken. The country about this spot

was cleared and cultivated. The moon being favorable, the approach of

anything could be descried in every direction. I installed myself and

waited. Weary after a ride of several hours over a very irregular

country, and not expecting any chance that night, I enjoined my spahi to

keep a good watch, and lay down. I was just about to fall asleep when I

felt a gentle pull at my burnous. On getting up I was able to make out

two lions, sitting one beside the other, about one hundred paces off,

and exactly on the path in which I had taken up my position. At first I

thought we had been perceived, and prepared to make the best of this

discovery. The moon shed a light upon the entire ground which the lions

would have to cross in order to reach the tree, close to which all

within a circumference of ten paces was completely dark, both on account

of the thickness of the tree and the shadow cast by the foliage. My

spahi, like me, was in range of the shadow, while the Arab lay snoring

ten paces off in the full light of the moon. There was no doubting the

fact--it was this man who attracted the attention of the lions. I

expressly forbade the spahi to wake up the Arab, as I was persuaded that

when the action was over he would be proud of having served as a bait

even without knowing it. I then prepared my arms and placed them against

the tree and got up, in order the better to observe the movements of the

enemy. They were not less than half an hour traversing a distance of one

hundred metres. Although the ground was open, I could only see them when

they raised their heads to make sure that the Arab was still there. They

took advantage of every stone and every tuft of grass to render

themselves almost invisible; at last the boldest of them came up

crouching on his belly to within ten paces of me and fifteen of the

Arab. His eye was fixed on the latter, and with such an expression that

I was afraid I had waited too long. The second, who had stayed a few

paces behind, came and placed himself on a level with and about four or

five paces from the first. I then saw for the first time that they were

full-grown lionesses. I took aim at the first, and she came rolling and

roaring down to the foot of the tree. The Arab was scarcely awakened

when a second ball stretched the animal dead upon the spot. The first

bullet went in at the muzzle and came out at the tail; the second had

gone through the heart. After making sure that my men were all right, I

looked out for the second lioness. She was standing up within fifteen

paces, looking at what was going on around her. I took my gun and

leveled it at her. She squatted down. When I fired she fell down

roaring, and disappeared in a field of maize on the edge of the road. On

approaching I found by her moaning that she was still alive, and did not

venture at night into the thick plantation which sheltered her. As soon

as it was day I went to the spot where she had fallen, and all I found

were bloodmarks showing her track in the direction of the wood. After

sending the dead lioness to the neighboring garrison, who celebrated its

arrival by a banquet, I returned to my post of the previous night. A

little after sunset the lion roared for the first time, but instead of

quitting his lair he remained there all night, roaring like a madman.

Convinced that the wounded lioness was there, I sent on the morning of

the 24th two Arabs to explore the cover. They returned without daring to

approach it. On the night of the 24th there was the same roaring and

complaining of the lion on the mountain and under cover. On the 25th, at

five in the evening, I had a young goat muzzled, and proceeded with it

to the mountain. The lair was exceedingly difficult of access.

Nevertheless I succeeded at last by crawling now on my hands and now on

my belly in reaching it. Having discovered certain indications of the

presence of the inhabitants of this locality, I had the goat unmuzzled

and tied to a tree. Then followed the most comical panic on the part of

the Arabs, who were carrying my arms. Seeing themselves in the middle of

the lion's lair, whom they could distinctly smell, and hearing the

horrified goat calling them with all its might, was a position perfectly

intolerable to them. After consulting together as to whether it were

better to climb up a tree or clamber on a rock, they asked my permission

to remain near the goat. This confidence pleased me and obtained them

the privilege of a place by my side. I had not been there a quarter of

an hour when the lioness appeared; she found herself suddenly beside the

goat, and looked about her with an air of astonishment. I fired, and she

fell without a struggle. The Arabs were already kissing my hands, and I

myself believed her dead, when she got up again as though nothing was

the matter and showed us all her teeth. One of the Arabs who had run

toward her was within six paces of her. On seeing her get up he clung to

the lower branches of the tree to which the goat was tied, and

disappeared like a squirrel. The lioness fell dead at the foot of the

tree, a second bullet piercing her heart. The first had passed out of

the nape of the neck without breaking the skull bone.

[From the Spectator.]

RECENT DEATHS IN THE FAMILY OF ORLEANS.

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin:" there is not one among

the millions who read of the mortal sufferings endured by Queen Louise

of Belgium that will not sympathize with the sorrowing relatives around

her deathbed; especially with that aged lady who has seen so many

changes, survived so many friends, mourned so many dear ones. To the

world Queen Amelie is like a relative to whom we are endeared by report

without having seen her; and as we read of her journey to pay the last

sad offices to her daughter, we forget the "royal personage," in regard

for that excellent lady who has been made known to us by so many

sorrows.

The Orleans family, in its triumphs and in its adversities, may be taken

as a living and most striking illustration of "principle,"--of principle

working to ends that are certain. Louis Philippe's character shone best

in his personal and family relation. He was a shifty expedientist in

politics: a great national crisis came to him as a fine opportunity to

the commercial man for pushing some particular kind of traffic. He

adopted the cant of the day, as mere traders adopt produce, ready made;

taking the correctness of the earlier stages for granted. He adopted

"the Monarchy surrounded by Republican institutions," as a Member of

Parliament takes the oaths, for form's sake: it was the form of

accepting the crown, its power and dignity; and he did what was

suggested as the proper thing to be done: but did he ever trouble

himself about the "Republican institutions?" He adopted the National

Guard, as a useful instrument to act by way of breastwork, under cover

of which his throne could repose secure, while the royal power could

shoot as it pleased _over_ that respectable body at the people: but did

he ever trouble himself with the purpose of a national guard?--No more

than a beadle troubles his head with the church theology or parochial

constitution. He never meddled with the stuff and vital working of

politics; and when the time came that required him to maintain his post

by having a hold on the nation of France, by acting with the forces then

at work, wholly incompetent to the unsought task, he let go, and was

drifted away by the flood of events. But still, though the most signal

instance of opportunity wasted and success converted to failure before

the eyes of Europe, he retained a considerable degree of respectability.

First, the vitality of the man was strong, and had been tested by many

vicissitudes; and the world sympathizes with that sort of leasehold

immortality. Further, his family clung around him: the respectable,

amiable paterfamilias, whose personal qualities had been somewhat

obscured by the splendors of the throne, now again appeared unvailed,

and that which was sterling in the man was once more known--again tried,

again sound. Louis Philippe failed as a king, he succeeded as a father.

Queen Amelie placed her faith less on mundane prosperity than on

spiritual welfare; and she was so far imbued by faith as a living

principle that it actuated her in her conduct as a daily practice. With

the obedience of the true Catholic, she combined the spirit of active

Christianity. While some part of her family has been inspired mainly by

the paternal spirit, some took their spirit from the mother; and none,

it would appear, more decidedly than Queen Louise. The accounts from

Belgium liken her to our own Queen Adelaide, in whom was exhibited the

same spirit of piety and practical Christianity; and we see the result

in the kind of personal affection that she earned. Agree with these

estimable women in their doctrine or not, you cannot but respect the

firmness of their own faith or the spirit of self-sacrifice which

remained uncorrupted through all the trials of temptations, so rife, so

_devitalizing_ in the life of royalty.

Death visits the palace and the cottage, and we expect his approach: we

understand his aspect, and know how he affects the heart of mortality.

Be they crowned or not, we understand what it is that mortal creatures

are enduring under the affliction; and we well know what it means when

parent and children, brothers and sisters, collect around the deathbed.

King Leopold we have twice seen under the same trial, and again remember

how much he has rested of his life on the personal relation. We note

these things; we call to mind all that the family, illustrious not less

by its vicissitudes and its adversities than by its exaltation, has

endured; and while we sympathize with its sorrows, we feel how much it

must be sustained by those reliances which endure more firmly than

worldly fortune. But our regard does not stop with admiration; we notice

with satisfaction this example to the family and personal relation--this

proof that amid the splendors of royalty the firmest reliances and the

sweetest consolations are those which are equally open to the humblest.

[From "Leaves from the Journal of a Naturalist," in Fraser's Magazine.]

PLEASANT STORY OF A SWALLOW.

In September, 1800, the Rev. Walter Trevelyan wrote from Long-Wilton,

Northumberland, in a letter to the editor of Bewick's "British Birds,"

the following narrative, which is so simply and beautifully written, and

gives so clear an account of the process of taming, that it would be

unjust to recite it in any words but his own for the edification of

those who may wish to make the experiment:--"About nine weeks ago

(writes the good clergyman), a swallow fell down one of our chimneys,

nearly fledged, and was able to fly in two or three days. The children

desired they might try to rear him, to which I agreed, fearing the old

ones would desert him; and as he was not the least shy they succeeded

without any difficulty, for he opened his mouth for flies as fast as

they could supply them, and was regularly fed to a whistle. In a few

days, perhaps a week, they used to take him into the fields with them,

and as each child found a fly and whistled, the little bird flew for his

prey from one to another; at other times he would fly round about them

in the air, but always descended at the first call, in spite of the

constant endeavors of the wild swallows to seduce him away; for which

purpose several of them at once would fly about him in all directions,

striving to drive him away when they saw him about to settle on one of

the children's hands, extended with the food. He would very often alight

on the children, uncalled, when they were walking several fields distant

from home." What a charming sketch of innocence and benevolence,

heightened by the anxiety of the pet's relations to win him away from

beings whom they must have looked upon as so many young ogres! The poor

flies, it is true, darken the picture a little; but to proceed with the

narrative:--"Our little inmate was never made a prisoner by being put

into a cage, but always ranged about the room at large wherever the

children were, and they never went out of doors without taking him with

them. Sometimes he would sit on their hands or heads and catch flies for

himself, which he soon did with great dexterity. At length, finding it

take up too much of their time to supply him with food enough to satisfy

his appetite (for I have no doubt he ate from seven hundred to a

thousand flies a day), they used to turn him out of the house, shutting

the window to prevent his returning for two or three hours together, in

hopes he would learn to cater for himself, which he soon did; but still

was no less tame, always answering their call, and coming in at the

window to them (of his own accord) frequently every day, and always

roosting in their room, which he has regularly done from the first till

within a week or ten days past. He constantly roosted on one of the

children's heads till their bed-time; nor was he disturbed by the child

moving about, or even walking, but would remain perfectly quiet with his

head under his wing, till he was put away for the night in some warm

corner, for he liked much warmth." The kind and considerate attempt to

alienate the attached bird from its little friends had its effect. "It

is now four days (writes worthy Mr. Trevelyan, in conclusion) since he

came in to roost in the house, and though he then did not show any

symptoms of shyness, yet he is evidently becoming less tame, as the

whistle will not now bring him to the hand; nor does he visit us as

formerly, but he always acknowledges it when within hearing by a chirp,

and by flying near. Nothing could exceed his tameness for about six

weeks; and I have no doubt it would have continued the same had we not

left him to himself as much as we could, fearing he would be so

perfectly domesticated that he would be left behind at the time of

migration, and of course be starved in the winter from cold and hunger."

And so ends this agreeable story: not, however, that it was "of course"

that the confiding bird would be starved if it remained, for the Rev.

W.F. Cornish, of Totness, kept two tame swallows, one for a year and a

half, and the other for two years, as he informed Mr. Yarrell.

[From Mure's Literature of Ancient Greece.]

EXCLUSION OF LOVE FROM GREEK POETRY.

One of the most prominent forms in which the native simplicity and

purity of the Hellenic bard displays itself is the entire exclusion of

sentimental or romantic love from his stock of poetical materials. This

is a characteristic which, while inherited in a greater or less degree

by the whole more flourishing age of Greek poetical literature,

possesses also the additional source of interest to the modern scholar,

of forming one of the most striking points of distinction between

ancient and modern literary taste. So great an apparent contempt, on the

part of so sensitive a race as the Hellenes, for an element of poetical

pathos which has obtained so boundless an influence on the comparatively

phlegmatic races of Western Europe, is a phenomenon which, although it

has not escaped the notice of modern critics, has scarcely met with the

attention which its importance demands. By some it has been explained as

a consequence of the low estimation in which the female sex was held in

Homer's age, as contrasted with the high honors conferred on it by the

courtesy of medieval chivalry; by others as a natural effect of the

restrictions placed on the free intercourse of the sexes among the

Greeks. Neither explanation is satisfactory. The latter of the two is

set aside by Homer's own descriptions, which abundantly prove that in

his time, at least, women could have been subjected to no such jealous

control as to interfere with the free course of amorous intrigue. Nor

even, had such been the case, would the cause have been adequate to the

effect. Experience seems rather to evince that the greater the

difficulties to be surmounted the higher the poetical capabilities of

such adventures. Erotic romance appears, in fact, to have been nowhere

more popular than in the East, where the jealous separation of the sexes

has, in all ages, been extreme. As little can it be said that Homer's

poems exhibit a state of society in which females were lightly esteemed.

The Trojan war itself originates in the susceptibility of an injured

husband: and all Greece takes up arms to avenge his wrong. The plot of

the Odyssey hinges mainly on the constant attachment of the hero to the

spouse of his youth; and the whole action tends to illustrate the high

degree of social and political influence consequent on the exemplary

performance of the duties of wife and mother. Nor surely do the

relations subsisting between Hector and Andromache, or Priam and Hecuba,

convey a mean impression of the respect paid to the female sex in the

heroic age. As little can the case be explained by a want of fit or

popular subjects of amorous adventure. Many of the favorite Greek

traditions are as well adapted to the plot of an epic poem or tragedy of

the sentimental order, as any that modern history can supply. Still less

can the exclusion be attributed to a want of sensibility, on the part of

the Greek nation, to the power of the tender passions. The influence of

those passions is at least as powerfully and brilliantly asserted in

their own proper sphere of poetical treatment, in the lyric odes, for

example, of Sappho or Mimnermus, as in any department of modern poetry.

Nor must it be supposed that even the nobler Epic or Tragic Muse was

insensible to the poetical value of the passion of love. But it was in

the connection of that passion with others of a sterner nature to which

it gives rise, jealousy, hatred, revenge, rather than in its own tender

sensibilities, that the Greek poets sought to concentrate the higher

interest of their public. Any excess of the amorous affections which

tended to enslave the judgment or reason was considered as a weakness,

not an honorable emotion; and hence was confined almost invariably to

women. The nobler sex are represented as comparatively indifferent,

often cruelly callous, to such influence; and, when subjected to it, are

usually held up as objects of contempt rather than admiration. As

examples may be cited the amours of Medea and Jason, of Phaedra and

Hippolytus, of Theseus and Ariadne, of Hercules and Omphale. The satire

on the amorous weakness of the most illustrious of Greek heroes embodied

in the last mentioned fable, with the glory acquired by Ulysses from his

resistance to the fascinations of Circe and Calypso, may be jointly

contrasted with the subjection by Tasso of Rinaldo and his comrades to

the thraldom of Armida, and with the pride and pleasure which the

Italian poet of chivalry appears to take in the sensual degradation of

his heroes. The distinction here drawn by the ancients is the more

obvious, that their warriors are least of all men described as

indifferent to the pleasures of female intercourse. They are merely

exempt from subjection to its unmanly seductions. Ulysses, as he sails

from coast to coast, or island to island, willingly partakes of the

favors which fair goddesses or enchantresses press on his acceptance.

But their influence is never permitted permanently to blunt the more

honorable affections of his bosom, or divert his attention from higher

objects of ambition.

[From the Spectator.]

THE GATEWAY OF THE OCEANS.

The forcing of the barrier which for three hundred years has defied and

imperiled the commerce of the world seems now an event at hand. One half

of the contract for the junction of the Atlantic and Pacific, obtained

from the State of Nicaragua last year by the promptitude of the

Americans, is to be held at the option of English capitalists; and an

understanding is at length announced, that if the contemplated

ship-canal can be constructed on conditions that shall leave no

uncertainty as to the profitableness of the enterprise, it is to be

carried forward with the influence of our highest mercantile firms. The

necessary surveys have been actually commenced; and as a temporary route

is at the same time being opened, an amount of information is likely

soon to be collected which will familiarize us with each point regarding

the capabilities of the entire region. It is understood, moreover, that

when the canal-surveys shall be completed, they are to be submitted to

the rigid scrutiny of Government engineers both in England and the

United States; so that before the public can be called upon to consider

the expediency of embarking in the undertaking, every doubt in

connection with it, as far as practical minds are concerned, will have

been removed.

The immediate steps now in course of adoption may be explained in a few

words. At present the transit across the Isthmus of Panama occupies four

days, and its inconveniences and dangers are notorious. At Nicaragua, it

is represented, the transit may possibly be effected in one day, and

this by a continuous steam-route with the exception of fifteen miles by

mule or omnibus. The passage would be up the San Juan, across Lake

Nicaragua to the town of that name, and thence to the port of San Juan

del Sur on the Pacific. On arriving at this terminus, (which is

considerably south of the one contemplated for the permanent canal,

namely Realejo,) the passenger would find himself some six or seven

hundred miles nearer to California than if he had crossed at the Isthmus

of Panama; and as the rate of speed of the American steamers on this

service is upward of three hundred miles a day, his saving of three days

in crossing, coupled with the saving in sea distance, would be

equivalent to a total of fifteen hundred miles, measured in relation to

what is accomplished by these vessels. A lower charge for the transit,

and a comparatively healthy climate, are also additional inducements;

and under these circumstances, anticipations are entertained that the

great tide of traffic will be turned in the new direction. This tide,

according to the last accounts from Panama, was kept up at the rate of

70,000 persons a year; and it was expected to increase.

The navigability of the San Juan, however, in its present state, remains

yet to be tested. The American company who have obtained the privilege

of the route have sent down two vessels of light draught, the Nicaragua

and the Director, for the purpose of forthwith placing the matter beyond

doubt. At the last date, the Director had safely crossed the bar at its

mouth, and was preparing to ascend; the Nicaragua had previously gone up

the Colorado, a branch river, where, it is said, through the

carelessness of her engineer, she had run aground upon a sand-bank,

though without sustaining any damage. The next accounts will possess

great interest. Whatever may be the real capabilities of the river,

accidents and delays must be anticipated in the first trial of a new

method of navigating it: even in our own river, the Thames, the first

steamer could scarcely have been expected to make a trip from London

Bridge to Richmond without some mishap. Should, therefore, the present

experiment show any clear indications of success, there will be

reasonable ground for congratulation; and it forms so important a

chapter in the history of enterprise, that all must regard it with good

wishes.

If the results of this temporary transit should realize the expectations

it seems to warrant, there can be little doubt the completion of the

canal will soon be commenced with ardor. Supposing the surveys should

show a cost not exceeding the sum estimated in 1837 by Lieutenant Baily,

the prospect of the returns would, there is reason to believe, be much

larger than the public have at any time been accustomed to suppose.

There is also the fact that the increase of these returns can know no

limit so long as the commerce of the world shall increase; and indeed,

already the idea of the gains to accrue appears to have struck some

minds with such force as to lead them to question if the privileges

which have been granted are not of a kind so extraordinarily favorable

that they will sooner or later be repudiated by the State of Nicaragua.

No such danger however exists; as the company are guaranteed in the safe

possession of all their rights by the treaty of protection which has

been ratified between Great Britain and the United States.

One most important sign in favor of the quick completion of the

ship-canal is now furnished in the circumstance that there are no rival

routes. At Panama, a cheap wooden railway is to be constructed, which

will prove serviceable for much of the passenger-traffic to Peru and

Chili; but the project for a canal at that point has been entirely given

up. The same is the case at Tehuantepec, where the difficulties are far

greater than at Panama.

It is true, the question naturally arises, whether if an exploration

were made of other parts of Central America or New Grenada, some route

might not be discovered which might admit of the construction of a canal

even at a less cost than will be necessary at Nicaragua. But in a matter

which concerns the commerce of the whole world for ages, there are other

points to be considered besides mere cheapness; and those who have

studied the advantages of Nicaragua maintain that enough is known of the

whole country both north and south of that State, to establish the fact

that she possesses intrinsic capabilities essential to the perfectness

of the entire work, which are not to be found in any other quarter, and

for the absence of which no saving of any immediate sum would

compensate. In the first place, it is nearer to California by several

hundred miles than any other route that could be pointed out except

Tehuantepec, while at the same time it is so central as duly to combine

the interests both of the northern and southern countries of the

Pacific; in the next place, it contains two magnificent natural docks,

where all the vessels in the world might refresh and refit; thirdly, it

abounds in natural products of all kinds, and is besides comparatively

well-peopled; fourthly, it possesses a temperature which is relatively

mild, while it is also in most parts undoubtedly healthy; and finally,

it has a harbor on the Pacific, which, to use the words of Dunlop in his

book on Central America, is as good as any port in the known world, and

decidedly superior even to Portsmouth, Rio Janeiro, Port Jackson,

Talcujana, Callao, and Guayaquil. The proximity to California moreover

settles the question as to American cooperation; which, it may be

believed, would certainly not be afforded to any route farther south,

and without which it would be idle to contemplate the undertaking.

At the same time, however, it must be admitted, that if any body of

persons would adopt the example now set by the American company, and

commence a survey of any new route at their own expense, they would be

entitled to every consideration, and to rank as benefactors of the

community, whatever might be the result of their endeavors. There are

none who can help forward the enterprise, either directly or indirectly,

upon whom it will not shed honor. That honor, too, will not be distant.

The progress of the work will unite for the first time in a direct

manner the two great nations upon whose mutual friendship the welfare of

the world depends; and its completion will cause a revolution in

commerce more extensive and beneficent than any that has yet occurred,

and which may still be so rapid as to be witnessed by many who even now

are old.

[From the Spectator.]

THE MURDER MARKET.

"The Doddinghurst murder," "the Frimley murder," "the Regent's Park

burglary," "the Birmingham burglary," "the Liverpool plate

robberies,"--the plots thicken to such a degree that society turns still

paler; and having last week asked for ideas on the subject of better

security for life and property, asks this week, still more urgently, for

_more_ security. We must then penetrate deeper into the causes.

Yes, civilization is observable in nothing more than in the development

of criminality. Whether it is that _pennyalining_ discloses it more, or

that the instances really are more numerous, may be doubtful; but why,

in spite of modern improvements to illumine, order, and guard society,

does crime stalk abroad so signally unchecked?--_that_ is the question.

We believe that the causes are various; and that to effect a thorough

amendment, we must deal with _all_ the causes, radically. Let us reckon

up some of them. One is, that the New Police, which at first acted as a

scarecrow, has grown familiar to the ruffianly or roguish: it has been

discovered that a Policeman is not ubiquitous, and if you know that he

is walking toward Berkhamstead you are certain that he is not going

toward Hemel Hempstead. In some counties the Policeman is the very

reverse of ubiquitous, being altogether non-inventus, by reason of

parsimony in the rate-payers. The disuse of arms and the general

unfamiliarity with them help to embolden the audacious. The increase of

wealth is a direct attraction: the more silver spoons and epergnes, the

more gold-handled knives and dish-covers electro-gilt, are to be found

in pantry, the more baits are there set for the wild animals of society;

and if there be no trap with the bait, then the human vermin merely run

off with it. But he will bite if you offer any let. With the general

luxury grows the burglarious love of luxury: as peers and cits grow more

curious in their appetites, so burglars and swell-mobsmen. The tasteful

cruet which tempts Lady Juliana, and is gallantly purchased by her

obliging husband Mr. Stubbs, has its claims also for Dick Stiles; and

the champagne which is so relished by the guests round Mr. Stubbs's

mahogany is pleasant tipple under a hedge. Another cause, most pregnant

with inconvenience to the public, is the practice in which we persist in

letting our known criminals go about at large, on constitutional

scruples against shutting the door till the steed be gone. We are bound

to treat a man as innocent until he be found guilty,--which means, that

we must not hang him or pillory him without proof before a jury: but an

innocent man may be suspected, and _ought_ to be suspected, if

appearances are against him. So much for the suspected criminal, whom we

will not take into custody until he has galloped off in our own saddle.

But even the convicted ruffian is to be set at large, under the system

of time sentences. Yes, "the liberty of the subject" demands the license

of the burglar.

A sixth cause is the mere increase of the population hereditarily given

to crime,--a caste upon which we have made so little impression, either

by prison discipline, ragged schools, or any other process. In education

we rely upon book learning or theological scrap teaching, neither of

which influences will reach certain minds; for there are many, and not

the worst dispositions, that never can be brought under a very active

influence of a studious or spiritual kind. But we omit the right kind of

training, the physical and material, for that order of mind.

Other causes are--the wide social separation in this country, by virtue

of which our servants are strangers in the house, alien if not hostile

to the family; the want of our present customs to give scope for such

temperaments as need excitement; the state of the Poor-law, which makes

the honest man desperate and relaxes the proper control over the

vagrant.

The remedies for these causes must go deeper than bells for shutters or

snappish housedogs for the night: meanwhile, we must be content to read

of murders, and to use the best palliatives we can--even shutter-bells

and vigilant little dogs.

[From the Examiner.]

STATUES.

Statues are now rising in every quarter of our metropolis, and mallet

and chisel are the chief instruments in use. Whatever is conducive to

the promotion of the arts ought undoubtedly to be encouraged; but love

in this instance, quite as much as in any, ought neither to be

precipitate nor blind. A true lover of his country should be exempted

from the pain of blushes, when a foreigner inquires of him, "_Whom does

this statue represent? and for what merits was it raised?_" The

defenders of their country, not the dismemberers of it, should be first

in honor; the maintainers of the laws, not the subverters of them,

should follow next. I may be asked by the studious, the contemplative,

the pacific, whether I would assign a higher station to any public man

than to a Milton and a Newton. My answer is plainly and loudly, _Yes_.

But the higher station should be in the streets, in squares, in houses

of parliament: such are their places; our vestibules and our libraries

are best adorned by poets, philosophers, and philanthropists. There is a

feeling which street-walking and public-meeting men improperly call

_loyalty_; a feeling intemperate and intolerant, smelling of dinner and

wine and toasts, which raises their stomachs and their voices at the

sound of certain names reverberated by the newspaper press. As little do

they know about the proprietary of these names as pot-wallopers know

about the candidates at a borough election, and are just as vociferous

and violent. A few days ago, I received a most courteous invitation to

be named on a Committee for erecting a statue to Jenner. It was

impossible for me to decline it; and equally was it impossible to

abstain from the observations which I am now about to state. I

recommended that the statue should be placed before a public hospital,

expressing my sense of impropriety in confounding so great a benefactor

of mankind, in any street or square or avenue, with the Dismemberer of

America and his worthless sons. Nor would I willingly see him among the

worn-out steam-engines of parliamentary debates. The noblest

parliamentary men who had nothing to distribute, not being ministers,

are without statues. The illustrious Burke, the wisest, excepting Bacon,

who at any time sat within the people's House; Romilly, the sincerest

patriot; Huskisson, the most intelligent in commercial affairs, has

none. Peel is become popular, not by his incomparable merits, but by his

untimely death. Shall we never see the day when Oliver and William mount

the chargers of Charles and George; and when a royal swindler is

superseded by the purest and most exalted of our heroes, Blake?

Walter Savage Landor.

[From the last Edinburgh Review.]

RESPONSIBILITY OF STATESMEN.

It is of the last moment that all who are, or are likely to be, called

to administer the affairs of a free state, should be deeply imbued with

the statesmanlike virtues of modesty and caution, and should act under a

profound sense of their personal responsibility. It is an awful thing to

undertake the government of a great country; and no man can be any way

worthy of that high calling who does not from his inmost soul feel it to

be so. When we reflect upon the fearful consequences, both to the lives,

the material interests, and the moral well-being of thousands, which may

ensue from a hasty word, an erroneous judgment, a temporary

carelessness, or a lapse of diligence; when we remember that every

action of a statesman is pregnant with results which may last for

generations after he is gathered to his fathers; that his decisions may,

and probably must, affect for good or ill the destinies of future times;

that peace or war, crime or virtue, prosperity or adversity, the honor

or dishonor of his country, the right or wrong, wise or unwise solution

of some of the mightiest problems in the progress of humanity, depend

upon the course he may pursue at those critical moments which to

ordinary men occur but rarely, but which crowd the daily life of a

statesman; the marvel is that men should be forthcoming bold enough to

venture on such a task. Now, among public men in England this sense of

responsibility is in general adequately felt. It affords an honorable

(and in most cases we believe a true) explanation of that singular

discrepancy between public men when in and when out of office--that

inconsistency between the promise and the performance,--between what the

leader of the opposition urges the minister to do, and what the same

leader, when minister himself, actually does,--which is so commonly

attributed to less reputable motives. The independent member may

speculate and criticise at his ease; may see, as he thinks, clearly, and

with an undoubting and imperious conviction, what course on this or that

question ought to be pursued; may feel so unboundedly confident in the

soundness of his views, that he cannot comprehend or pardon the

inability of ministers to see as he sees, and to act as he would wish;

but as soon as the overwhelming responsibilities of office are his own,

as soon as he finds no obstacle to the carrying out of his plans, except

such as may arise from the sense that he does so at the risk of his

country's welfare and his own reputation--he is seized with a strange

diffidence, a new-born modesty, a mistrust of his own judgment which he

never felt before; he re-examines, he hesitates, he delays; he brings to

bear upon the investigation all the new light which official knowledge

has revealed to him; and finds at last that he scruples to do himself

what he had not scrupled to insist upon before. So deep-rooted is this

sense of responsibility with our countrymen, that whatever parties a

crisis of popular feeling might carry into power, we should have

comparatively little dread of rash, and no dread of corrupt, conduct on

their part; we scarcely know the public man who, when his country's

destinies were committed to his charge, could for a moment dream of

acting otherwise than with scrupulous integrity, and to the best of his

utmost diligence and most cautious judgment,--at all events till the

dullness of daily custom had laid his self-vigilance asleep. We are

convinced that were Lord Stanhope and Mr. Disraeli to be borne into

office by some grotesque freak of fortune, even they would become

sobered as by magic, and would astonish all beholders, not by their

vagaries, but by their steadiness and discretion. Now, of this wholesome

sense of awful responsibility, we see no indications among public men in

France. Dumont says, in his "Recollections of Mirabeau," "I have

sometimes thought that if you were to stop a hundred men

indiscriminately in the streets of Paris and London, and propose to each

to undertake the government, ninety-nine of the Londoners would refuse,

and ninety-nine of the Parisians would accept." In fact, we find it is

only one or two of the more experienced _habitues_ of office who in

France ever seem to feel any hesitation. Ordinary deputies, military

men, journalists, men of science, accept, with a _naive_ and simple

courage, posts for which, except that courage, they possess no single

qualification. But this is not the worst; they never hesitate, at their

country's risk and cost, to carry out their own favorite schemes to an

experiment; in fact, they often seem to value office mainly for that

purpose, and to regard their country chiefly as the _corpus vile_ on

which the experiment is to be made. To make way for their theories, they

relentlessly sweep out of sight the whole past, and never appear to

contemplate either the possibility or the parricidal guilt of failure.

[From the New Monthly Magazine.]

THE COW TREE OF SOUTH AMERICA.

Mr. Higson met with two species of cow tree, which he states to be

abundant in the deep and humid woods of the provinces of Choco and

Popayan. In an extract from his diary, dated Ysconde, May 7, 1822, he

gives an account of an excursion he made, about twelve miles up the

river, in company with the alcaide and two other gentlemen, in quest of

some of these milk trees, one species of which, known to the inhabitants

by the name of Popa, yields, during the ascent of the sap, a redundance

of a nutritive milky juice, obtained by incisions made into the thick

bark which clothes the trunk, and which he describes as of an ash color

externally, while the interior is of a clay red. Instinct, or some

natural power closely approaching to the reasoning principle, has taught

the jaguars, and other wild beasts of the forest, the value of this

milk, which they obtain by lacerating the bark with their claws and

catching the milk as it flows from the incisions. A similar instinct

prevails amongst the hogs that have become wild in the forests of

Jamaica, where a species of Rhus, the _Rhus Metopium_ of botanists,

grows, the bark of which, on being wounded, yields a resinous juice,

possessing many valuable medicinal properties, and among them that of

rapidly cicatrizing wounds. How this valuable property was first

discovered by the hogs, or by what peculiar interchange of ideas the

knowledge of it was communicated by the happy individual who made it to

his fellow hogs, is a problem which, in the absence of some porcine

historiographer, we have little prospect of solving. But, however this

may be, the fact is sufficiently notorious in Jamaica, where the wild

hogs, when wounded, seek out one of these trees, which, from the first

discoverers of its sanative properties, have been named "Hog Gum Trees,"

and, abrading the bark with their teeth, rub the wounded part of their

bodies against it, so as to coat the wound with a covering of the gummy,

or rather gum-resinous fluid, that exudes from the bark. In like manner,

as Mr. Higson informs us, the jaguars, instructed in the nutritious

properties of the potable juice of the Popa, jump up against the stem,

and lacerating the bark with their claws greedily catch the liquid

nectar as it issues from the wound. By a strange perverseness of his

nature, man, in the pride of his heart and the intoxication of his

vanity, spurns this delicious beverage, which speedily fattens all who

feed on it, and contents himself with using it, when inspissated by the

sun, as a bird-lime to catch parrots; or converting it into a glue,

which withstands humidity, by boiling it with the gum of the mangle-tree

(_Sapium aucuparium?_), tempered with wood ashes. Mr. Higson states that

they caught plenty of the milk, which was of the consistence of cream,

of a bland and sweetish taste, and a somewhat aromatic flavor, and so

white as to communicate a tolerably permanent stain wherever it fell; it

mixed with spirit, as readily as cow's milk, and made, with the addition

of water, a very agreeable and refreshing beverage, of which they drank

several tutumos full. They cut down a tree, one of the tallest of the

forest, in order to procure specimens, and found the timber white, of a

fine grain, and well adapted for boards or shingles. They were about a

month too late to obtain the blossoms, which were said to be very showy,

but found abundance of fruit, disposed on short foot-stalks in the alae

of the leaves; these were scabrous, and about the size of a nutmeg. The

leaves he describes as having very short petioles, hearted at the base,

and of a coriaceous consistence, and covered with large semi-globular

glands.

Besides the Popa, he speaks of another lactescent tree, called Sande,

the milk of which, though more abundant, is thinner, bluish, like

skimmed milk, and not so palatable.