PART I.

BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE

NO. CCCXXXII. JUNE, 1843. VOL. LIII.

CONTENTS.

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN

THE VIGIL OF VENUS. TRANSLATION FROM THE LATIN

CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY. RISE OF THE KIUPRILI FAMILY

SIEGE OF CANDIA.--NO. IX.

A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF A MAÎTRE-D'ARMES

AMMALÁT BEK. A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS, FROM THE

RUSSIAN OF MARLÍNSKI.--CONCLUSION

MR BAILEY'S REPLY TO AN ARTICLE IN BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. ILLUSTRATED BY MULREADY

THE ATTORNEY'S CLERK IN THE MONK'S HOOD

IGNACIO GUERRA AND EL SANGRADOR; A TALE OF CIVIL WAR

MEMORANDUMS OF A MONTH'S TOUR IN SICILY

COMMERCIAL POLICY--RUSSIA

INDEX

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART I.

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?

Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,

Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?

Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,

And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?

Have I not in the pitched battle heard

Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE

Why I give the world a sketch of my career through it, is not among the

discoveries which I intend to make. I have been a public man; let those

who know public life imagine what interest may be felt in reviewing the

scenes and struggles of which such a life is full. May there not be a

pleasure in conceiving once again the shapes and circumstances of

things, as one sitting by his fireside sees castles and cottages, men,

women, and children in the embers, and shapes them the better for the

silence and the solitude round him? Let the reader take what reason he

will. I have seen the world, and fought my way through it; have

stumbled, like greater men, have risen, like lesser; have been flung

into the most rapid current of the most hurried, wild, and vivid time

that the world has ever seen--I have _lived_ through the last fifty

years. In all the vigour of my life, I have mingled in some of the

greatest transactions, and been mingled with some of the greatest men,

of my time. Like one who has tumbled down Niagara, and survived the

fall, though I have reached still water, the roar of the cataract is yet

in my ears; and I can even survey it with a fuller gaze, and stronger

sense of its vastness and power, than, when I was rolling down its

precipice.

I have been soldier, adventurer, traveller, statesman. I have been

lover, husband, father--poor and opulent; obscure and conspicuous. There

are few sensations of our nature, or circumstances of our life, which I

have not undergone. Alternately suffering to the verge of ruin, and

enjoying like an epicurean deity: I have been steeped in poverty to the

lips; I have been surcharged with wealth. I have sacrificed, and

fearfully, to the love of power; I have been disgusted with its

possession. I figured in the great Babel until I loved even its

confusion of tongues; I grew weary of it, until I hated the voice of

man.

Every man is born for a special purpose, and with a special passion. The

multitude, possessing both, exhibit neither; they are flung, or choose

to be flung, into the pond, where they float only to perish, like blind

puppies. But there are others who stem the great tide, and are only the

stronger for the struggle. From my first sense, the passion to be known

and felt, nay, at the expense of being feared, was my impulse. It has

been the impulse of all men who have ever impressed the world. With

great talents it is all-commanding: the thunderbolt in the hands of

Jove. Even with inferior faculties, and I make no pretence of mine, it

singularly excites, urges, and animates. When the prophet saw the

leopard _winged_, he saw a miracle; I claim for my powers only those of

the muscle and sinew.

Ambition was the original passion of my nature. It rose before me, as

the sun ascends before the Indian, until its fire drives him to the

shade. I, too, have been scorched, have shrunk, and now I regret my

shrinking. But time deals alike with all. I can now amuse myself only by

images of the past; and, in the darkness and solitude of years, I take

their Magic Lantern, and replace life by the strange, wild, and

high-coloured extravagances, the ghosts and genii of the phantasmagoria

of ambition.

I was the seventh son of one of the oldest families of England. If I had

been the seventh son of the seventh son, I should, by all the laws of

juggling, have been a conjurer; but I was a generation too early for

fame. My father was an earl, and as proud of his titles as if he had won

them at Crecy or Poictiers, and not in the campaigns of Westminster,

consummated on the backstairs of Whitehall. He had served his country,

as he termed it, in a long succession of Parliaments; and served her

still more, as his country neighbours termed it, by accepting a peerage,

which opened the county to any other representative among the sons of

men. He was a strong-built, stern-countenanced, and haughty-tongued

personage--by some thought a man of sense; by others a fool, with all

his depth, arising from his darkness. My own experience convinced me,

that no man made more of a secret, or thought less of a job. From my

boyhood I own I feared more than honoured him; and as for love, if I had

been more susceptible, mine would have flown round the globe before it

could have fixed on that iron visage. The little love that I could

afford for any human being, was for another and a different order of

existence. Boys have a natural fondness for the mother; and mine was

gentle, timid, and fond. She always parted with me, on my going to

school, as if she had lost a limb, and when I returned, received me as

if she had found a pinion in its place. She perhaps spoiled me by

indulgence, as much as my lord and father spoiled me by severity; but

indulgence is the pleasanter of the two, and I followed the course of

nature, and gave her whatever heart I have. I still remember her. She

was remarkably indebted to nature, at least for externals. She had fine

eyes--large, dark, and sentimental; her dress, which would now be

preposterous, seemed to me, then, the perfection of all taste, and was

in the highest fashion of her time. Her beauty worked miracles; for now

and then I have observed even my father's eye fixed on her, with

something of the admiration which we might conceive in an Esquimaux for

a fixed star, or in an Italian highwayman for some Parian statue which

he had stumbled on in his thickets. But the admiration was soon absorbed

in the job in hand, and he turned away--to scribble to the Minister. Of

the younger portion of the family I shall say but little. Children are

happiest in the nursery, and there I leave them. I had two sisters,

sweet little creatures, one with black eyes and the other with blue.

This is enough for their description. My four brothers were four rough,

bold, well-looking animals, all intended for ambassadors, admirals,

generals, and secretaries of state--for my father had too long tasted of

the honey of official life to think that there was any other food for a

gentleman in the world. He had been suckled for too many years at those

breasts, which, like the bosom of the great Egyptian goddess, pour the

stream of life through whole generations of hangers-on, to believe that

any other fount of existence was to be named but the civil list. I am

strongly inclined to surmise that he would have preferred a pencil,

purloined from the Treasury, to all the cedars of Lebanon.

It may be presumed that I was destined for public life--in other words,

to live on the public; and, to prepare me for the performance of a part,

alternately menial and master--supple as the slave, and superb as the

minister--I was sent to Eton. At this great school of the aristocracy,

would-be and real--barons and dukes _in esse_, and the herald's office

alone, or bedlam, knows what _in posse_, I remained for the customary

number of years. If whoever does me the honour to read these pages,

hates the history of schooldays as much as I do their memory, he will

easily pardon my passing by the topic altogether. If the first purpose

of all great public institutions is to stand still; the great schools of

England, fifty years ago, were righteous adherents to their contract;

they never moved. The world might whirl round them as it would; there

remained the grey milestones, only measuring the speed with which every

thing on the road passed them. This, they say, has largely and

fortunately changed in later years. But the change must proceed; the

venerable cripples must throw by their crutches, and try the effect of

flesh and blood. Flogging and fagging, are the education for a footman;

they disgrace the common sense, and offend the feelings of a manly

people. The pugilist must be expelled, and the puppy must follow him.

The detestable grossness of classical impurity, must be no longer the

price at which Latin "quantities" are to be learned. The last lesson of

the "prodigal son," must not be the first learned by the son of the

gentleman of England--to be fed on the "husks" fit only for the swine.

* * * * *

On my delighted release from this supreme laboratory of statesmen, I

found the state of things considerably altered at Mortimer Castle. I had

left it a stately but rather melancholy-looking household; I found the

mansion glittering in all the novelty of French furniture, gilding, and

_or-molu_--crowded with fashion, and all its menial tribe, from the

groom in the stables to the gentleman's gentleman, who slipped along the

chambers in soft silence, and seemed an embodying of Etiquette, all in

new equipments of all kinds--the avenue trimmed, until it resembled a

theatrical wood; and the grounds, once sober and silent enough for a

Jacques to escape from the sight of human kind, and hold dialogues with

the deer; now levelled, opened, shorn, and shaved, with the precision of

a retired citizen's elysium.

The heads of the family were equally changed; my mother, unhappily, for

the worse. Her fine eyes beamed with joy as she threw herself upon my

neck, and murmured some of those mingled blessings and raptures which

have a language of their own. But when the first flush was past, I

perceived that the cheek was thin, the eye was hollow and heavy, and the

tremulous motion of her slight hand, as it lay in mine, alarmed me; in

all my ignorance of the frailty of the human frame. But the grand change

was in the Earl. My father, whom I had left rather degenerating into the

shape which three courses and a bottle of claret a-day inflict on

country gentlemen "who live at home at ease," was now braced and laced,

costumed in the newest fashion, and overflowing with exuberant

volatility. He breathed of Bond Street. He welcomed me with an ardour

which astonished, more than delighted, me; Talked fragments of French,

congratulated me on my "_air distingué_," advised me to put myself "_en

grande tenue_;" and, after enchanting me in all kinds of strange ways,

concluded by making an attempt to kiss me on both cheeks, like a true

Frenchman. My Eton recollections enabled me to resist the paternal

embrace; until the wonder was simplified, by the discovery that the

family had but just returned from a continental residence of a couple of

years--a matter of which no letter or word had given me the knowledge at

my school. My next discovery was, that an old uncle had died, and left

us money enough to carry the county; and the last and crowning one was,

that my eldest brother had just been returned for the North Riding.

This was such an accumulation of good-luck as might have thrown any

elderly gentleman off the balance of his gravity. It was like Philip's

three plates at the Greek horse-races, crowned by the birth of

Alexander. If my lordly father had danced the "Minuette de la Cour" over

the marble tesselation of his own hall, I should now not have been

surprised. But, from my first sense, or insensibility, I had felt no

great delight in matters which were to make my own condition neither

better nor worse; and after a remarkably brief period, the showy

_déjeûnés_ and dinners which commemorated the triumphs of the

heir-apparent of our house, grew tiresome to me beyond all count, and I

openly petitioned to be sent to college, or to the world's end.

My petition was listened to with a mixture of contempt for my want of

taste, and astonishment at my presumption. But before the reply had time

to burst out from lips, at no time too retentive, I was told, that at

the end of one week more I should be suffered to take my way; that week

being devoted to a round of especial entertainments in honour of my

brother's election; the whole to be wound up by that most preposterous

of all delights, an amateur play.

To keep a house in commotion, to produce mysterious conversations,

conferences without number, and confidences without end; and to swell

maidens' hearts and milliners' bills, let me recommend an amateur play

in the country. The very mention of it awoke every soul in the Castle;

caps and complexions were matched, and costumes criticised, from morning

till night, among the ladies. The "acting drama" was turned over leaf by

leaf by the gentlemen. The sound of many a heavy tread of many a heavy

student, was heard in the chambers; the gardens were haunted by "the

characters" getting their parts; and the poet's burlesque of those who

"rave, recite, and madden round the land," was realized to the life in

the histrionic labours of the votaries of Thalia and Melpomene, who

ranged the groves of Mortimer Castle.

Then we had all the charming difficulty of fixing on the play. The

dullest and dreariest of our country Rosciuses were uniformly for

comedy; but the fair sex have a leaning to the tragic muse. We had one

or two, who would have had no objection to be piquant in Lady Teazle, or

petulant in Lady Townley; but we had half a dozen Desdemonas and

Ophelias. The soul of an O'Neil was in every one of our party conscious

of a pair of good eyes, a tolerable shape, and the captivation which, in

some way or other, most women in existence contrive to discover in their

own share of the gifts of nature. At length the votes carried it for

Romeo and Juliet. The eventful night came; the _élite_ of the county

poured in, the theatre was crowded; all was expectancy before the

curtain; all was terror, nervousness, and awkwardness behind. The

orchestra performed its flourish, and the curtain rose.

To do the heads of the household justice, they had done their duty as

managers. The theatre, though but a temporary building, projecting from

the ball-room into one of the gardens, was worthy of the very handsome

apartment which formed its vestibule. The skill of a famous London

architect had been exerted on this fairy erection, and Verona itself

had, perhaps, in its palmiest days, seldom exhibited a display of more

luxuriant elegance. The audience, too, so totally different from the

mingled, ill-dressed, and irregular assemblage that fills a city

theatre; blooming girls and showy matrons, range above range, feathered

and flowered, glittering with all the family jewels, and all animated by

the novelty of the scene before them, formed an exhibition which, for

the night, inspired me with the idea, that (strolling excepted) the

stage might not be a bad resource for a man of talents, after all.

But the play was--must I confess it? though I myself figured as the

Romeo--utterly deplorable. The men forgot their parts, and their casual

attempts to recover them made terrible havoc of the harmony of

Shakspeare. The ladies lost their voices, and carried on their loves,

their sorrows, and even their scoldings, in a whisper. Our play

perfectly deserved the criticism of the old gentleman, who, after a

similar performance, being asked which of the personages he liked best,

candidly replied, "the prompter, for of him he had heard the most and

seen the least."

However, every thing has an end; and we had carried Juliet to the tomb

of all the Capulets, the chant was done, and the mourners were gathered

in the green-room. I was standing, book in hand, preparing for the last

agonies of a love very imperfectly committed to memory, when I heard a

slight confusion in the court-yard, and shortly after the rattle of a

post-chaise. The sound subsided, and I was summoned to my post at the

entrance to the place where the lovely Juliet lay entranced. The

pasteboard gate gave way to knocks enforced with an energy which called

down rapturous applause; and in all the tortures of a broken heart,

rewarded by a profusion of handkerchiefs applied to bright eyes, and a

strong scent of hartshorn round the house, I summoned my fair bride to

my arms. There was no reply. I again invoked her; still silent. Her

trance was evidently of the deepest order. I rose from the ground, where

I had been "taking the measure of my unmade grave," and approaching the

bier, ventured to drop a despairing hand upon her pillow. To my utter

surprise, it was vacant. If I had been another Shakspeare, the situation

was a fine one for a display of original genius. But I was paralyzed. A

sense of the general embarrassment was my first impression, and I was

absolutely struck dumb. But this was soon shaken off. My next was a

sense of the particular burlesque of my situation; I burst out into

laughter, in which the whole house joined; and throwing down my mattock,

rushed off the stage. My theatrical dream was broken up for ever.

* * * * *

But weightier matters now absorbed the universal interest. The

disappearance of the heroine from the stage was speedily accounted for

by her flight in the carriage whose wheels had disturbed my study. But

where fled, why, and with whom? We now found other defalcations in our

numbers; the Chevalier Paul Charlatanski, a gallant Polish exile, who

contrived to pass a very pleasant time on the merit of his misfortunes,

a man of enormous mustaches and calamities, was also missing. His valet,

his valise, every atom that ever appertained to him, had vanished; the

clearance was complete. The confusion now thickened. I never saw the

master of the mansion in such a rage before. Pistols and post-chaises

were in instant requisition. He vowed that the honour of his house was

involved in the transaction, and that nothing should tempt him to

slumber until he had brought the fugitive fair one to the arms of her

noble family; my Juliet being the ward of a duke, and being also

entitled to about twenty thousand pounds a-year on her coming of age.

As for the unlucky, or rather the lucky, Chevalier, nothing human ever

received a hotter shower of surmise and sarcasm. That he was "an

impostor, a swindler, a spy," was the Earl's conviction, declared in the

most public manner. The whole body of matrons looked round on their

blooming innocents, as if they had been snatched from the jaws of a

legion of wolves and thanked their own prudence which had not trusted

those men of mustaches within their hall doors. The blooming innocents

responded in filial gratitude, and, with whatever sincerity, thanked

their stars for their fortunate escape.

Still, the Earl's indignation was of so _ultra_ a quality; his revenge

was so fiery, and his tongue so fluent; that I began to suspect he had

other motives than the insulted laws of hospitality. I reached this

discovery, too, in time. The declining health of his partner had made

him speculate on the chances of survivorship. He certainly was no longer

young, and he had never been an Adonis. Yet his glass did not altogether

throw him into the rank of the impracticable. A coronet was a well-known

charm, which had often compensated for every other; in short, he had

quietly theorized himself into the future husband of the ducal ward; and

felt on this occasion as an Earl should, plundered, before his face, of

a clear twenty thousand a-year.

But he was not to suffer alone. On further enquiry, it was ascertained

that the chevalier's valet had not gone with him. This fellow, a

Frenchman, had taken wing in another direction, and carried off his

turtle-dove, too; not one of the full-blown roses of the servant's-hall,

but a rosebud, the daughter of one of the bulkiest squires of the

Riding; a man of countless beeves and blunders; one of our Yorkshire

Nimrods, "a mighty hunter," until club dinners and home-brewed ale tied

him to his arm-chair, and gout made him a man of peace and flannels, the

best thriven weed in the swamps of Yorkshire. The young lady had been

intended for my eldest brother, as a convenient medium of connexion

between two estates, palpably made for matrimony. Thus we received two

mortal blows in one evening; never was family pilfered more

ignominiously; never was amateur play more peevishly catastrophized.

It must be owned, to the credit of "private theatricals," that the play

had no slight share in the plot. The easy intercourse produced by

rehearsals, the getting of tender speeches by heart, the pretty

personalities and allusions growing out of those speeches, the ramblings

through shades and rose-twined parterres, the raptures and romance, all

tend prodigiously to take off the alarm, or instruct the inexperience,

of the female heart. I know no more certain cure for the rigidity that

is supposed to be a barrier. At all events, the Chevalier and his valet,

probably both footmen, alike had profited of their opportunity. Our play

had cost us two elopements; two shots between wind and water, which

threatened to send the ship down; two breakings of that heart which men

carry in their purse. I laughed, and the world laughed also. But I was

then thoughtless, and the world is malicious. My father and the member,

though they had "never told their love," felt the blow "like a worm in

the bud," and from that night I date the family decline.

Of course, the two whiskered vagabonds could not be suffered to carry

off their laurels without an attempt to diminish them, and my father and

brother were too much in earnest in their objects to lose time. In half

an hour, four post-horses to each britchska whirled them off;--my

father, to take the northern road, some hints of Gretna having

transpired in the slipshod secrecy of the servants' hall--my brother, to

pursue on the Dover road, conjecturing, with more sagacity than I had

given him credit for, that as the fox runs round to his earth, the

Frenchman always speeds for Paris.

The company soon dispersed, after having stayed long enough to glean all

that they could of the family misfortune, and fix appointments for every

day in the week to meet each other, and make the most of the whole

transaction. But still a tolerable number of the steadier hands

remained, who, to show their sympathy with us, resolved not to separate

until they received tidings of his lordship's success. I was voted to

the head of the table, more claret was ordered, the wreck of the general

supper was cleared for one of a snugger kind; and we drew our chairs

together. Toast followed toast, and all became communicative. Family

histories, not excepting our own, were now discussed, with a confidence

new to my boyish conjectures. Charlatanski's career abroad and at home

seemed to be as well known as if he had been pilloried in the county

town; the infinite absurdity of the noble duke who suffered him to make

his way under his roof, and the palpable _penchant_ of his ward, next

underwent discussion; until the ignorance of my noble father on the

subject, gave, with me, the death-blow to his penetration. The

prettinesses which had won the primrose heart of my brother's intended

spouse, I found were equally notorious; the Earl's project was as plain

as if he had pronounced it _viva voce_; and before we parted for the

night, which did not occur until the sun was blazing through the

curtains of our banqueting room, I had made up my mind, once for all,

that neither character nor cunning can be concealed in this world; that

the craftiest impostor is but a clumsier kind of clown; and that the

most dexterous disguise is but a waste of time.

I must hasten to the _dénouement_. Our excellent friends indulged us

with their company, and bored us with their society for a mortal week.

But, as Sterne says of the sentimental traveller, scenes of sentiment

are always exhibiting themselves to an appetite eager for knowing what

the world is doing; the knowledge was contributed with a copiousness

which left nothing to learn, and but little to desire. Our guests were

of that class which usually fills the houses of noblemen, in the

annihilation of life in town; clubmen, to whom St James's Street was the

terraqueous globe; guardsmen, on leave of absence for the shooting

season, and saturated with London; several older exhibitors in the

fashionable circles, who as naturally followed where young guardsmen and

wealthy squires were to be found, as flies wing to the honey on which

they live; and two or three of the most opulent and dullest baronets who

ever played whist and billiards, for the advantage of losing guinea

points to gentlemen more accomplished in the science of chances.

At length, on the sixth day, when I really began to feel anxious, an

express announced that his lordship had arrived at a village, about

fifty miles off, on his way home, wounded, and in great danger. I

instantly broke up the convivial party, and set out to see him. To the

imagination of a boy, as I was then, nothing could be more startling

than the aspect of the habitation which now held the haughty Earl of

Mortimer. After passing through a variety of dungeon-like rooms, for the

house had once been a workhouse, or something of the kind, I was ushered

into the chamber where the patient lay. The village doctor, and one or

two of the wise people of the neighbourhood, who thought it their duty

to visit a stranger, that stranger being a man of rank, were standing

by; and the long faces of those persons, seconded by the professional

shake of the doctor's head, told me, that they at least had no hope. It

was not so with the sufferer himself, for he talked as largely and

loftily of what he was to do within the next ten years, as if he was to

survive the century. He still breathed rage and retribution against the

Chevalier, and actually seemed to regard the lady's choice as a

particular infraction of personal claims. He had pursued the fugitives

day and night, until the pursuit threw him into a kind of fever. While

under this paroxysm he had met the enamoured pair, but it was on their

way from that forge on the Border where so many heavy chains have been

manufactured. Useless as challenging was now, he challenged the husband.

The parties met, and my father received a bullet in his body, while he

had the satisfaction of lodging one in his antagonist's knee-pan. The

Chevalier was doomed to waltz no more. But his bullet was fatal.

As I looked round the wretched chamber in which this bold, arrogant, and

busy spirit was evidently about to breathe its last, Pope's lines on the

most splendid _roué_ of his day involuntarily and painfully shot across

my recollection:--

"In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung,

The walls of plaster, and the floor of dung;

The George and Garter dangling from the bed,

Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,

Great Villiers lies; alas, how changed from him

The glass of fashion!"

I say no more of those scenes; a few days, only enough to collect the

branches of the family round the bed, terminated every thing. Grief,

they say, cannot exist where there is no love, but I was not inclined,

just then, to draw subtle distinctions. I was grieved; and paid the last

duties, without blame to myself, or, I hope, irreverence in the sight of

others. The funeral was stately, and all was over.

Matters now took a new shape at the castle. My brother returned, to find

himself its possessor. His journey had been equally unproductive with my

unfortunate father's. By dint of bribing the postilions, he had even

overpassed the fugitives on the Dover road. But, as he stopped to dine

in Canterbury, where he had prepared a posse of constables for their

reception, he had, unluckily, been accosted by an old London

acquaintance, who had accidentally fixed his quarters there for a day or

two, "seeking whom he might devour." The dinner was followed by a

carouse, the carouse by a "quiet game," or games, which lasted till the

next day; and when my brother rose, with the glow of a superb sunset

giving him the first intimation that he was among the living, he made

the discovery that he was stripped of the last shilling of five hundred

pounds, and that the Frenchman and his prize had quietly changed horses

at the same hotel half a dozen hours before.

* * * * *

The young forget quickly, but they feel keenly. The event which I had

just witnessed threw a shade over me, which, in the want of any vigorous

occupation, began to affect my health. I abjured the sports of the

field, for which, indeed, I had never felt much liking. I rambled

through the woods in a kind of dreamy idleness of mind, which took but

little note of any thing, time included. As mendicants sell tapes and

matches to escape the imputation of mendicancy, I carried a pencil and

portfolio, and seemed to be sketching venerable oaks and patches of the

picturesque, while my mind was wandering from Line to Pole. But in this

earth no one can be singular with impunity. The gentlemen were

"convinced" that my meditations were heavy with unpaid college bills;

and the ladies, from high to low, from "Tilburina, mad in white satin,"

to her "confidant, mad in white linen," were all of opinion that some

one among their peerless selves had destroyed the "five wits of young Mr

Marston." I could have fallen on them with a two-handed sword; but as

the massacre of the sex was not then in my power, I had only to escape.

There were higher matters to move me. Clouds were gathering on the

world; the times were fitful; the air was thick with rumours from

abroad; the sleep of the Continent was breaking up, and Europe lay in

the anxious and strange expectancy in which some great city might see

the signs of a coming earthquake, without the power of ascertaining at

what moment, or from what quarter, its foundations were to be flung up

in sight of the sun.--We were then in the first stage of the French

Revolution!

I resolved to linger and be libelled no more; and being ushered, by

appointment, into the library--for the new master was already all

etiquette--I promptly stated my wishes, and demanded my portion, to try

my fortune in the world.

Our conference, if it had but little of the graces of diplomacy, had

much more than its usual decision. It was abrupt and unhesitating. My

demand had evidently taken his "lordship" by surprise. He started from

the magisterial chair, in which he was yet to awe so many successions of

rustic functionaries, and with a flushed cheek asked "Whether I was

lunatic, or supposed him to be so?"

"Neither the one nor the other," was my answer. "But, to waste life here

is out of the question. I demand the means of entering a profession."

"Are you aware, sir, that our interest is lost since the last change of

ministers? that my estate is loaded with encumbrances? that every

profession is overstocked? and what can you do in the crowd?"

"What others have done--what I should do in a crowd in the streets--push

some aside, get before others; if made way for, be civil; if resisted,

trample; it has been the history of thousands, why not mine?"

The doctrine was as new to this son of indulgence, as if I had

propounded the philosopher's stone. But his courage was exhausted by a

controversy perhaps longer than he had ever ventured on before. He

walked to the glass, adjusted his raven ringlets, and having refreshed

his spirits with the contemplation, enquired, with a smile which made

the nearest possible approach to a sneer, whether I had any thing more

to say?

I had more, and of the kind that least suited his feelings. I demanded

"my property."

The effect of those two words was electrical. The apathy of the

exquisite was at an end, and in a voice of the most indignant

displeasure, he rapidly demanded whether I expected money to fall from

the moon? whether I was not aware of the expense of keeping up the

castle? whether I supposed that my mother's jointure and my sisters'

portions could ever be paid without dipping the rent-roll deeper still?

and, after various and bitter expostulation, "What right had I to

suppose that I was worth the smallest coin of the realm, except by his

bounty?"

One query answered them all. "My lord, is it not true that I am entitled

to five thousand pounds?"

"Five thousand ----?" what word was to fill up the interval I can only

guess. But the first lesson which a man learns at the clubs is, to

control his temper when its display is not likely to be attended with

effect. He saw that I stood his gaze with but few symptoms of giving

way, and he changed his tactics with an adroitness that did honour to

his training. Approaching me, he held out his hand. "Charles, why should

_we_ quarrel about trifles? I was really not acquainted with the

circumstance to which you allude, but I shall look into it without

delay. Pray, can you tell me the when, the where, the how?"

"Your questions may be easily answered. The _when_ was at the death of

our uncle, the _where_ was in his will, and the _how_--in any way your

lordship pleases." The truce was now made; he begged of me, "as I valued

_his_ feelings," to drop the formality of his title, to regard him

simply as a brother, and to rely on his wish to forward every object

that might gratify my inclination.

Our conference broke up. He galloped to a neighbouring horse-race. I

went to take a solitary ramble through the Park.

The hour and the scene were what the poet pronounces "fit to cure all

sadness but despair." Noble old trees, the "roof star-proof" overhead,

the cool velvet grass under the feet--glimpses of sunlight striking

through the trunks--the freshened air coming in gusts across the lake,

like new life, bathing my burning forehead and feverish hands--the whole

unrivalled sweetness of the English landscape softened and subdued me.

Those effects are so common, that I can claim no credit for their

operation on my mind; and, before I had gone far, I was on the point of

returning, if not to recant, at least to palliate the harshness of my

appeal to fraternal justice.

But, by this time I had reached a rising ground which commanded a large

extent of the surrounding country. The evening was one of those

magnificent closes of the year, which, like a final scene in a theatre,

seems intended to comprehend all the beauties and brilliancies of the

past. The western sky was a blaze of all colours, and all pouring over

the succession of forest, cultured field, and mountain top, which make

the English view, if not the most sublime, the most touching of the

earth!

But as I stood on the hill, gazing round to enjoy every shape and shade

at leisure, my eye turned on the Castle. It spoiled all my serenity at

once. I felt that it was a spot from which I was excluded by nature;

that it belonged to others so wholly, that scarcely by any conceivable

chance could it ever be mine; and that I could remain within its walls

no longer, but with a sense of uselessness and shame.

If I could have taken staff in hand and pack on shoulder, I would have

started at that moment on a pilgrimage that might have circled the

globe. But the most fiery resolution must submit to circumstances. One

night more, at least, I must sleep under the paternal roof, and I was

hastening home, brooding over bitter thoughts, when I suddenly rushed

against some one whom I nearly overthrew.--"Bless me, Mr Marston, is it

you?"--told me that I had run down my old tutor, Mr Vincent, the parson

of the parish. He had been returning from visiting some of his flock,

and in the exercise of the vocation which he had just been fulfilling,

he saw that something went ill with me, and taking my arm, forced me to

go home with him, for such comfort as he could give.

Parsons, above all men, are the better for wives and families; for,

without them, they are wonderfully apt to grow saturnine or stupid. Of

course there are exceptions. Vincent had a wife not much younger than

himself, to whom he always spoke with the courtiership of a _preux

chevalier_. A portrait of her in her bridal dress, showed that she had

been a pretty brunette in her youth; and her husband still evidently

gave her credit for all that she had been. They had, as is generally the

fate of the clergy, a superfluity of daughters, four or five I think,

creatures as thoughtless and innocent as their own poultry, or their own

pet-sheep. But all round their little vicarage was so pure, so quiet,

and so neat--there was such an aspect of order and even of elegance,

however inexpensive, that its contrast with the glaring and restless

tumult of the "great house" was irresistible. I never had so full a

practical understanding of the world's "pomps and vanities," as while

looking at the trimmings and trelisses of the parson's dwelling.

I acknowledge myself a worldling, but I suppose that all is not lead or

iron within me, from my sense of scenes like this. In my wildest hour,

the sight of fields and gardens has been a kind of febrifuge to me--has

conveyed a feeling of tranquillity to my mind; as if it drank the

silence and the freshness, as the flowers drink the dew. I have often

thus experienced a sudden soothing, which checked the hot current of my

follies or frenzies, and made me think that there were better things

than the baubles of cabinets. But it did not last long.

I mention this evening, because it decided my future life; or at least

the boldest, and perhaps the best portion of it. We had an hour or two

of the little variations of placid amusement which belong to all

parsonages in romances, but which here were reality; easy conversation

on the events of the county; a little political talking with the vicar;

a few details of persons and fashions at the castle, to which the ladies

listened as Desdemona might have listened to Othello's history--for the

Castle was so seldom visited by them, that it had almost the air of a

Castle of Otranto, and they evidently thought that its frowning towers

and gilded halls belonged to another race, if not to another region of

existence; we had, too, some of the last new songs, (at least half a

century old, but which were not the less touching,) and a duet of

Geminiani, performed by the two elder proficients on a spinet which

might have been among the "chamber music" of the Virgin Queen; all

slight matters to speak of, and yet which contributed to the quietude of

a mind longing for rest--sights of innocence and sounds of peace, which,

like the poet's music--

"Might take the prison'd soul

And wrap it in Elysium."

The moon shining in through panes covered with honeysuckle and fragrance

of all kinds, at length warned me that I was intruding on a household

primitive in their hours, as in every thing else, and I rose to take my

leave. But I could not be altogether parted with yet. It seems that they

had found me a most amusing guest; while, to my own conception, I had

been singularly spiritless; but the little anecdotes which were trite to

me had been novelties to them. Fashion has a charm even for

philosophers; and the freaks and follies of the high-toned sons and

daughters of fashion--who wore down my gentle mother's frame, drained my

showy father's rental, and made even myself loathe the sight of loaded

barouches coming to discharge their cargoes of beaux and belles on us

for weeks together--were nectar and ambrosia to my sportive and

rosy-cheeked audience. The five girls put on their bonnets, and looking

like a group of Titania and her nymphs, as they bounded along in the

moonlight, escorted us to the boundary of the vicar's territory.

We were about to separate, with all the pretty formalities of village

leave-taking; when their father, in the act of shaking hands with me,

fixed his eye on mine, and insisted on seeing me home. Whether the

thought occurred to him that I had still something on my mind, which was

not to be trusted within sight of a brook that formed the boundary to

the Castle grounds, I know not, but I complied; the girls were sent

homewards, and I heard their gay voices mingling, at a distance, and not

unsuitably, with the songs of the nightingale.

I took his arm, and we walked on for a while in silence. At length,

slackening his pace, and speaking in a tone whose earnestness struck me,

"Charles," said he, "has any thing peculiarly painful lately happened to

you?--if so, speak out. I know your nature to be above disguise; and

with whom can you repose your vexations, if such there be, more safely

than with your old tutor?"

I was taken unawares; and not having yet formed a distinct conception of

my own grievances, promptly denied that I had any.

"It may be so," said my friend; "and yet once or twice this evening I

saw your cheek alternately flush and grow pale, with a suddenness that

alarmed me for your health. In one of your pleasantest stories, while

you were acting the narrative with a liveliness evidently unconscious,

and giving me and mine a treat which we have not had for a long time, I

observed your voice falter, as if some spasm of soul had shot across

you; and I unquestionably saw, that rare sight in the eyes of man, a

tear."

I denied this instance of weakness stoutly; but the old man's

importunities prevailed, and, by degrees, I told him, or rather his

good-natured cross-examination moulded for me, a statement of my

anxieties at home.

The Vicar, with all his simplicity of manner, was a man of powerful and

practical understanding. He had been an eminent scholar at his

university, and was in a fair way for all its distinctions, when he

thought proper to fall desperately in love. This, of course, demolished

his prospects at once. I never heard his subsequent history in detail;

but he had left England, and undergone a long period of disheartening

and distress. Whether he had not, in those times of desolation, taken

service in the Austrian army, and even shared some of its Turkish

campaigns, was a question which I heard once or twice started at the

Castle; and a slight contraction of the arm, and a rather significant

scar which crossed his bold forehead, had been set down to the account

of the Osmanli cimeter.

* * * * *

Vincent had never told the story of either, but a rumour reached his

college of his having been seen in the Austrian uniform on the

Transylvanian frontier, during the campaigns of the Prince of Coburg and

Laudohn against the Turks. It was singular enough, that on this very

evening, in arguing against some of my whims touching destinies and

omens, he illustrated the facility of imposture on such points by an

incident from one of those campaigns.

"A friend of mine," said he, "a captain in the Lichtenstein hussars,

happened to be on the outpost service of the army. As the enemy were in

great force, and commanded by the Vizier in person, an action was daily

expected, and the pickets and videttes were ordered to be peculiarly on

the alert. But, on a sudden, every night produced some casualty. They

either lost videttes, or their patrol was surprised, or their baggage

plundered--in short, they began to be the talk of the army. The regiment

had been always one of the most distinguished in the service, and all

those misfortunes were wholly unaccountable. At length a stronger picket

than usual was ordered for the night--not a man of them was to be found

in the morning. As no firing had been heard, the natural conjecture was,

that they must all have deserted. As this was a still more disgraceful

result than actual defeat, the colonel called his officers together, to

give what information they could. The camp, as usual, swarmed with

Bohemians, fortune-tellers, and gipsies, a race who carry intelligence

on both sides; and whose performances fully accounted for the knowledge

which the enemy evidently had of our outposts. The first order was, to

clear the quarters of the regiment of those encumbrances, and the next

to direct the videttes to fire without challenging. At midnight a shot

was heard; all turned out, and on reaching the spot where the alarm had

been given, the vidette was found lying on the ground and senseless,

though without a wound. On his recovery, he said that he had seen a

ghost; but that having fired at it, according to orders, it looked so

horribly grim at him, that he fell from his horse and saw no more. The

Austrians are brave, but they are remarkably afraid of supernatural

visitants, and a ghost would be a much more formidable thing to them

than a discharge of grape-shot.

"The captain in question was an Englishman, and as John Bull is

supposed, among foreigners, to carry an unusual portion of brains about

him, the colonel took him into his special council in the emergency.

Having settled their measures, the captain prepared to take charge of

the pickets for the night, making no secret of his dispositions. At

dark, the videttes and sentries were posted as usual, and the officer

took his post in the old field redoubt, which had been the headquarters

of the pickets for the last fortnight.

"All went on quietly until about midnight; the men off duty fast asleep

in their cloaks, and the captain reading an English novel. He, too, had

grown weary of the night, and was thinking of stretching himself on the

floor of his hut, when he saw, and not without some perturbation, a tall

spectral figure, in armour, enter the works, stride over the sleeping

men without exciting the smallest movement amongst them, and advance

towards him. He drew his breath hard, and attempted to call out, but his

voice was choked, and he began to think himself under the dominion of

nightmare. The figure came nearer still, looking more menacing, and drew

its sword. My friend, with an effort which he afterwards acknowledged to

be desperate, put his hand to his side to draw his own. What was his

alarm when he found that it had vanished? At this moment his poodle,

which, against all precautions, had followed him, began barking

fiercely, and rushing alternately towards him and a corner of the

redoubt. Though his sabre was gone, a brace of English pistols lay on

the table beside him, and he fired one of them in the direction. The

shot was followed by a groan and the disappearance of the spectre. The

men started to their feet, and all rushed out in pursuit. The captain's

first step struck upon a dead body, evidently that of the spy who had

fallen by his fire. The pursuit was now joined in by the whole regiment,

who had been posted in the rear unseen, to take advantage of

circumstances. They pushed on, swept all before them, and bore down

patrol and picket until they reached the enemy's camp. The question then

was, what to do next? whether to make the best of their way back, or try

their chance onward? The Englishman's voice was for taking fortune at

the flow; and the accidental burning of a tent or two by the fugitives

showed him the Turks already in confusion. The trampling of battalions

in the rear told him at the same time that he had powerful help at hand,

and he dashed among the lines at once. The hussars, determined to

retrieve their reputation, did wonders--the enemy were completely

surprised. No troops but those in the highest state of discipline are

good for any thing when attacked at night. The gallantry of the Turk by

day, deserts him in the dark; and a night surprise, if well followed up,

is sure to end in a victory. From the random firing and shouting on

every side, it was clear that they were totally taken unawares; and the

rapid and general advance of the Austrian brigades, showed that Laudohn

was in the mind to make a handsome imperial bulletin. Day dawned on a

rout as entire as ever was witnessed in a barbarian campaign. The enemy

were flying in all directions like a horde of Tartars, and camp, cannon,

baggage, standards, every thing was left at the mercy of the pursuers."

"But the captain, the Englishman, what became of him?" I asked, slightly

glancing at the countenance of the narrator.

"Oh, very well off indeed! Foreign Governments are showy to the soldier,

and Joseph the Second, though an economist in civil matters, was liberal

to his successful officers. The captain received a pension; a couple of

orders; was made a colonel on the first opportunity; and, besides, had

his share of the plunder--no slight addition to his finances, for the

military chest had been taken in the baggage of the Seraskier."

"And by this time," said I, with an unenquiring air, "he is doubtless a

field-marshal?"

"Nothing of the kind," replied my reverend friend, "for his victory

cured him of soldiership. He was wounded in the engagement, and if he

had been ever fool enough to think of fame, the solitary hours of his

invalidism put an end to the folly. Other and dearer thoughts recurred

to his mind. He had now obtained something approaching to a competence,

if rightly managed; he asked permission to retire, returned to England,

married the woman he loved; and never for a moment regretted that he was

listening to larks and linnets instead of trumpets and cannon, and

settling the concerns of rustics instead of manoeuvring squadrons and

battalions."

"But what was the ghost, after all?"

"Oh, the mere trick of a juggler! a figure projected on the wall by some

ingenious contrivance of glasses. The instrument was found on the body

of the performer, who turned out to be the colonel's valet--of course in

the enemy's pay, and who furnished them with daily intelligence of all

our proceedings. As for the loss of the sabre, which actually startled

the ghost-seer most, he found it next morning hanging up in the hut,

where he himself had placed it, and forgotten that he had done so."

"And the captain, or rather the colonel, brought with him to England, a

cimeter-cut on his arm, and another on his forehead?" I asked, fixing my

eyes on him. A crimson flush passed over his countenance, he bit his lip

and turned away. I feared that I had offended irreparably. But his

natural kindliness of heart prevailed, he turned to me gently, laughed,

and pressing my hand in his, said, "You have my secret. It has escaped

me for the first time these thirty years. Keep it like a man of honour."

* * * * *

I have always held that the life of man's mind, where man _has_ a

mind--which is not always the case--is a thing of fits and starts. I

even doubt whether any one who will take the trouble to recollect, will

not be able to put his finger on the precise periods at which new views

of every thing suddenly opened before him, and he emerged at once, if

not into new powers, at least into a new use of them. The frame may grow

like a tree; the faculties may grow as imperceptibly as the frame; but

the mind acquires that knowledge of life which forms its exercise, its

use, and perhaps its essence, by bounds and flights. This moonlight walk

with my old and honoured Mentor, was the beginning of my mental

adolescence. My manhood was still to come, and with a more severe

instructor.

As we were passing slowly through the plantations which encircled the

Castle with all the noble and profuse shelter and ornament which our

ancestors loved, a distant sound of music came on the wind. I then

remembered, for the first time, that my brother had, on that evening,

given a ball to the county, and a sudden sense of the difference of our

lots in life, came painfully over me;--the course of secure wealth and

English enjoyment, contrasted with the dependence and wandering which

must form the existence of myself, and so many thousands of younger

brothers.

I was awakened from my reverie by the voice of my companion. His face

was upturned to the cloudless sky, and he was murmuring the fine passage

in the Merchant of Venice.

"Look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:

Such harmony is in immortal souls."

"Do you know, Charles," said he, "what changed the whole current of my

life? what, in fact, brought me back to England?" and there was a slight

pause. "What made me a Christian? It was such a night as this. As you

now know the chief part of my story, I need have no further concealment

on the subject. I had recovered from my wounds, and was preparing to set

out for Vienna, when one night a tempest blew down our tents, and left

us to trust to the open air for the hours till morning. Tempests in the

south are violent, but they are generally brief, and this gale cleared

the sky of every cloud. As I lay on the ground, and gazed on the unusual

splendour of the stars, the thought occurred to me, Why should doubts of

a future state ever come into the mind of man? Why should he hesitate

about its reality? Was it not there, before his eyes? Were not the very

regions of future existence already within the reach of one of his

senses? Why might they not yet be within the reach of all? Of course I

do not give you all the vague thoughts which passed through my mind; but

the permanence, power, and astonishing multitude of those bright worlds,

impressed themselves on me with a new force. I had known all those

matters before, but on this night I felt them. My next thoughts were of

the power, the wisdom, and the majesty of the mighty Being by whom all

this had been formed, moved, and sustained through thousands of years. I

need not follow the history of my conversion--for a conversion it was.

When I looked round me on the sleeping troops, I saw nothing but clods

of the valley--gallant beings, but as insensible to their high

inheritance as the chargers they rode. My heart moved me towards them;

and perhaps, in some instances, I succeeded in giving them my own ideas.

But Austria defies, at least, all human change. I was not a fanatic, and

I had no wish to strive with impossibilities. I sent in my resignation;

abandoned the 'pride, pomp, and circumstance' of the most tempting of

all human pursuits, and returned to England to be, what you see me now."

With this man I could have no reserves, and I freely asked his advice on

the plunge which I was about to make into that fathomless tide of good

and ill, the world. I mentioned the Church as the profession which my

mother had suggested, but for which I did not conceive either my temper

or my habits suitable.

"You are right, then, in abandoning the idea altogether," was the

answer; "and yet I know no profession more capable of fulfilling all the

objects of a vigorous mind. I am not now talking of mitres; they can

fall to but few. I speak of the prospects which it opens to all; the

power of exerting the largest influence for the highest purposes; the

possession of fame without its emptiness, and the indulgence of

knowledge without its vanity; energy turned to the most practical and

lofty uses of man; and the full feast of an ambition superior to the

tinsel of the world, and alike pure in its motives, and immeasurable in

its rewards."

"And, yet," said I, naming one or two of our clerical slumberers, "the

profession seems not to be a very disturbing one."

"Those men, was the answer, would have been slumberers at the bar, in

senates, or in the field. I may be prejudiced in favour of the choice

which I made so long since, and which I have never found reason to

repent. But I have not the slightest wish to prejudice any one in its

favour. There is no profession which more requires a peculiar mind;

contentment, with whatever consciousness of being overlooked; patience,

with whatever hopelessness of success; labour, for its own sake; and

learning, with few to share, few to admire, and fewer still to

understand."

"If my father had lived," said I, "it was his intention to have tried my

chance in diplomacy."

"Probably enough; for he had figured in that line himself. I remember

him secretary of embassy at Vienna. Perhaps you will scarcely believe,

that I, too, have had my experience on the subject? Accident once made

me an attaché to our envoy at Naples. The life is an easy one. Idleness

was never more perfectly reduced to a system, than among the half dozen

functionaries to whom the interests of the British empire were entrusted

in the capital of the Lazzaroni. As the Frenchman said of the Academy,

'We had nothing to do, and we did it.'"

"Italy," said I, "is the land of pleasure, and the Lazzaroni are its

philosophers, but one cannot sleep like them in the face of day, and all

day long. Let what will come, I have no desire to be a weed on the

shore."

"No; we had our occupations; for we had the attendance on the court

days--a business of as much formality, as if the fate of mankind

depended on it. Then we had the attendance on the opera at night, a

matter nearly as tiresome. The post from England reached Naples but once

a-week, and scarcely once a month conveyed any intelligence that was

worth the postage. But, if politics were out of the question, we had

negotiation in abundance; for we carried on the whole diplomacy of the

opera-house in London, engaged _primo tenores_, and settled the rival

claims of _prima donnas_; gave our critical opinions on the merits of

dancers worthy of appearing before the British _cognoscenti_; and

dispatched poets, ballet-masters, and scene-painters, to our managers,

with an activity worthy of the purest patriotism. What think you of the

bar?"

"I have no head for its study; and no heart for its employment."

"It leads more rapidly to rank than any other profession under the sun;

profit beyond counting, and a peerage. Those are no bad things."

"Both capital, if one could be secure of them. But they take too much

time for me. I never was born to sit on the woolsack. No; if I were to

follow my own inclination, I should be a soldier."

I have already said that I have been, throughout life, a kind of

believer in omens. I have seen such a multitude of things decided by

some curious coincidence, some passing occurrence, some of those odd

trifles for which it is impossible to account, but which occur at the

instant when the mind is wavering on the balance; that I feel no wonder

at the old superstitions of guessing our destiny from the shooting of a

star, or the flight of birds. While we were rambling onward, discussing

the merits and demerits of the profession of arms, we heard the winding

of the mail-guard's horn. I sprang the fence, and waited in the road to

enquire the last news from the metropolis. It was momentous--the

Revolution had effectually broken out. Paris was in an uproar. The

king's guards had taken up arms for the people. The Bastile was stormed!

If I had hesitated before, this news decided me; not that I pretend to

have even dreamed of the tremendous changes which were to be produced in

the world by that convulsion. But it struck me as the beginning of a

time, when the lazy quietude of years was about to be broken up, and

room made for all who were inclined to exert themselves. Before we had

reached the level lawns and trim parterres which showed us the lights of

the family festivity, I had settled all the difficulties which might

impede the career of less fortunate individuals; time and chance were

managed with the adroitness of a projector; and if Bellona had been one

of the Nine Muses, my speculations could not have been more poetical.

Somewhat to my surprise, they received no check from my venerable tutor;

quite the contrary. The singular sympathy with which he listened to my

most daring and dashing conceptions, would have betrayed his early

history if I had still the knowledge to acquire. His very looks, as he

listened to my rodomontades, recurred to me, when I read, many years

after, Scott's fine description of his soldier-monk in the Lay of the

Last Minstrel:--

"Again on the knight look'd the churchman old,

And again he sigh'd heavily,

For he had himself been a warrior bold,

And fought in Spain and Italy.

And he thought on the days that were long gone by,

When his limbs were strong, and his courage was high."

* * * * *

The news from France produced a sensation throughout England totally

indescribable at the present day. Every tongue and every heart was full

of it. It offered something for every mind of the million to seize on.

Like a waterspout, such as I have seen sweeping over the bosom of the

Atlantic, half-descending from the skies, and half-ascending from the

deep; every second man whom one met gave it credit for a different

origin, some looking at the upper portion and some at the lower; while,

in the mean time, the huge phenomenon was blackening, gathering, and

rushing onward, threatening to turn all above into darkness and all

below into storm. It made the grand subject of parliamentary eloquence,

and parliament was never more eloquent; it filled the speeches of the

factious, it was hailed by the shouts of the multitude, and it disturbed

the fireside with fear and hope, with wishing and wonder. It must be

acknowledged that a vast quantity of this excitement was absolute folly;

but, at the same time, there was a sincerity in the folly which redeemed

it from ridicule. Nothing could be more evident than that this French

patriotism was as theatrical, in the countless majority of instances, as

the loves and sorrows of its stage. Yet, however the speeches might be

got by heart, or the frippery and actors hired, the _drame_ was

powerfully performed; and all Europe sat by, giving it the tribute of

its tears and its terrors. Even we of England, with all our more sober

recollections that the heroes were ragamuffins, and the heroism

imaginary, gave ourselves up to the illusion. I shall not say that I was

wiser than the rest of mankind. I liked excitement, wherever it was to

be found. The barriers to distinction were still too firmly closed

against the youngest son of an embarrassed family, not to suggest many a

wish for whatever chance might burst the gate, or blow up the rampart;

and my first effort in political life was a harangue to the rabble of

the next borough, conceived in the most Gallic style. Yet this act of

absurdity had the effect of forwarding my views more rapidly than if I

had become an aristocratic Demosthenes. My speech was so much applauded

by the mob, that they began to put its theories in practice, though with

rather more vigour than I had dreamed of. There were riots, and even

some attempts at the seizure of arms; and the noble duke, our neighbour,

had received a threatening letter, which sent him at full gallop to the

Home Secretary. A note, by no means too gentle in its tone, was

instantly despatched to my noble brother, enquiring why he did not

contrive to keep the minor branches of his family in better order, and

threatening him with the withdrawal of the county patronage. My demand

of a commission in the Guards was no longer answered by the head of our

house with astonishment at the loftiness of my expectations, and

statements of the utter emptiness of the family exchequer. The result of

his brief correspondence with Downing Street was a letter, notifying

that his majesty was pleased to accept my services in the Coldstream.

I was enraptured, and my brother was enraptured, for we had both gained

our objects. I had got rid of him and ennui. He had got rid of me, and

the displeasure of the grand dispensers of place and pension. No time

was lost in forwarding me to make my bow at the Horse Guards; and my

noble brother lost as little time in making me put my hand to a paper,

in which, for prompt payment, I relinquished one half of my legacy. But

what cared I for money? I had obtained a profession in which money was

contemptible, the only purse the military chest, and the only prize,

like Nelson's, a peerage or Westminster Abbey. The ferment did not cool

within the week, and within that period I had taken leave of half the

county, been wished laurels and aiguillettes by a hundred or a thousand

of the fairest of our country belles; and been wished a thousand miles

off by the wise matrons, to whom the sight of a "younger son without

house or land" is a nuisance, a kite among their family pigeons.

At that moment, however, all their dovecots were secure. I should not

have spent a sigh on the Venus de Medicis had she sprung from her

pedestal to enchant me. The world was open before me; and trite and

trifling objects were no more to occupy my time. I felt like one who,

after wandering all day through the depths of an American forest,

suddenly reaches its border, and sees before him the boundless prairie,

with its boundlessness still more striking, from the absence of any

distinct object on which the eye could rest. What were horses, dogs, and

country dinners, to the world of London and of life which now came in

full, and, I will own it, extravagant vision before me? The ideas which

I conceived of men and things, of my own fortunes, and the fortunate

exercise of my own powers, were of an order which, in my calmer days,

have often made me smile; yet what is the whole early life of man but a

predisposition to fever? and I was then throbbing on the fiery verge of

the disease.

I shall say but little of my first sensations on reaching London. My

eyes and ears were in full activity. But the impression upon all who

enter this mightiest of capitals for the first time, is nearly the same.

Its perpetual multitude, its incessant movement, its variety of

occupations, sights and sounds, the echo of the whole vast and sleepless

machinery of national existence, have been a thousand times the subject

of description, and always of wonder. Yet, I must acknowledge, that its

first sight repelled me. I had lived in field and forest, my society had

been among my fellows in rank; I had lived in magnificent halls, and

been surrounded by bowing attendants; and now, with my mind full of the

calm magnificence of English noble life, I felt myself flung into the

midst of a numberless, miscellaneous, noisy rabble, all rushing on

regardless of every thing but themselves, pouring through endless lines

of dingy houses; and I nothing, an atom in the confusion, a grain of

dust on the great chariot wheel of society, a lonely and obscure

struggler in the mighty current of human life, which rolled along the

sullen channels of the most cheerless, however it might be the largest,

of capitals.

For the first week, I was absolutely unable to collect my thoughts. All

that I learned was, to make my way through the principal thoroughfares,

and know the names of her chief buildings. In later days, I took a more

practical view of matters, and regarded them only as places in which the

business of the hour was to be done. But in my first view, something of

the romance and revival of my forest walks clung to me. I remember that,

when I first saw the Horse Guards, to which, of course, one of my

earliest visits was paid, I found no slight difficulty in thinking of it

as only a remarkably clownish mass of brick and stone, crowded with

clerks. To me it was the very palace of war; the spot from which the

thunderbolts of England were launched; the centre and the stronghold of

that irresistible influence with which England sways and moulds mankind.

The India House was another of my reveries. I could not think of it as

but a huge pile in a vulgar outlet of the city, as a place of porters

and messengers loitering in gloomy corridors, of busy clerks for ever

scribbling in nooks unvisited by the sun, or even of portly directors,

congregating in halls encrusted with the cobwebs of centuries. To my

eyes it was invested with the mystery and dignity of Orientalism. I

thought of the powers by which rajahs were raised and overthrown, of the

mandates which spread war and restored peace over regions wide as

Europe, and a thousand times more brilliant. I had rambling visions of

armies of elephants, superb cavalry, and chieftains covered with gold

and diamonds. As I traversed the dusky halls, I thought of the will

which pronounced the fate of kingdoms, the fallen glories of Aurengzebe,

the broken sceptre of the Mahratta, and the crushed tiara of Mysore.

Round me was the moving power of an empire, the noblest that the East

has ever seen, and which, in the act of assuming additional greatness,

by a contradiction to all the laws of extended conquest, was hourly

assuming additional stability.

And yet, and yet, are not those the true views, after all? Are the

effects to be forgotten in the instruments, or is it not the result

which forms the character of the whole? Are we to think of the dagger

which strikes the master of a throne, as only the steel in the hand of

an assassin, or as the summoner to civil war and the subversion of

thrones? Is the pen which pours political frenzy through the hearts of

living millions, or sheds the splendours of poetry over millions still

to come, to be valued only as the feather of a bird? Or is the press

itself to be remembered only as a dexterous combination of springs and

screws; or to be bowed down to as the steward of all the hidden

treasures of mind--as the breaker of intellectual chains, the avenger of

injured rights, the moral Hercules that goes forth turning the

wilderness to fertility, and smiting the monsters of the world?

But among the wonders of the time, there was one which struck me with

prodigious force, which has remained on my recollection to this hour,

and which still survives with undiminished vividness. It was the acting

of Siddons.

The stage is now almost undone. The absurd liberalism of the day has

given every corner of London a theatre, and has degraded the character

of the stage in all. By scattering the ability which still exists, it

has stripped the great theatres of the very means of representing

dramatic excellence; while, by adopting popular contrivances to obtain

temporary success, they have driven away dramatic genius in contempt or

in despair. Our stage is now condemned to be fed like a felon from the

dungeons, and, like the felon, to feel a stigma in every morsel which it

puts between its lips. It must stoop to French frivolity, or German

extravagance, and be glad to exist upon either. Yet, why should not

higher names come to its aid? Why should not the State relieve the

difficulties of a great institution, which might be made to repay its

assistance a thousand-fold? Is there nothing that could be withdrawn

from the waste of our civil lists, or the pomp of public establishments,

to reunite, to purify, and even to exalt the stage? The people _will_

have theatres. Good or evil, noble or degraded, the stage will be

demanded by the people. Is it a thing indifferent to our rulers, to

supply them with this powerful and universal excitement in its highest

degree of moral influence, or in its lowest degree of impurity; to bring

before them, with all the attractions of the drama, the memory of heroes

and sages, patriots and martyrs, or leave them to rake for the

indulgence of eye and ear in the very kennels of crime?

"They order those things better in France."

Unquestionably. The care of Government there protects the national

taste, and prevents the theatres from looking for subsistence to the

history of the highway. The vices which now haunt theatres are no more

necessary to their nature, than to the senate or the palace. Why should

not the State interpose to prevent the sale of poison on the stage, as

in the streets? Why should it not offer prizes and honours for great

tragedies and comedies, as soon as it would for a voyage to the Arctic

or Antarctic? But is dramatic genius dead in England? What, in England!

where nothing dies--where every faculty of the heart and understanding

is in the most perpetual activity--where the noblest impulses are

perpetually pushing forward to the noblest ends--where human nature

moves in all its vigour, from hour to hour, without disguise--where the

whole anatomy of the moral frame is visible, and all its weakness, and

all its wonders, are the daily spectacle of all mankind!

In giving these opinions of the powers of the stage, need I guard them

by saying, that I contemplate a higher spirit than the drama even of

Shakspeare has ever displayed--one which, to the vigour of his

characters, and the splendours of his poetry, should add a moral of

which his time was scarcely conscious? My idea would approach more

nearly the objects of the great Greek dramas, in which the first

sympathies of the people were appealed to by the most powerful

recollections of historic virtue; their national victories over the

Persian, the lofty conceptions of their Olympus, the glories of their

national power, and the prospects of their imperishable renown. I

contemplate nothing of the weakness, locality, or license, of our old

drama. I think only of a rich and lofty combination of characters above

the level of our time, thoughts belonging to that elevation, feelings

more generous, vivid, and majestic, and exploits uniting the soaring

spirit of old romance with the sustained strength of modern energy;

Greece in her brightest days of intellectual lustre, Rome in her most

heroic days of patriotism, and England in those days which are yet to

come, and which shall fill up her inheritance of glory.

Siddons was then witching the world--witching, in its more solemn sense;

for though her smile was exquisite, she might have sat for the picture

of a Sybil or a Pythoness. The stage had never seen her equal, and will

probably never see another so completely formed to command all its

influences. Yet her beauty, her acting, even her movement, were

characteristic, and their character was noble melancholy. I never saw so

mournful a countenance combined with so much beauty. Her voice, though

grand, was melancholy--her step, though superb, was melancholy; her very

smile was melancholy; and yet there was so much of living intellect in

her expression, such vast variety of passion in her look and gesture;

she so deeply awoke the feelings, or so awfully impressed the mind; thus

it was impossible to escape the spell, while she moved upon the stage.

In this language there is not the slightest exaggeration. I have seen a

whole audience burst into tears at a single tone of her voice. Her

natural conception was so fine, that the merest commonplace often

received a living spirit from her lips. I have seen a single glance from

her powerful eye hush an audience--I have seen her acting sometimes even

startle and bewilder the actors beside her. There is perhaps a genius

for every art, and hers was the genius of the stage--a faculty of

instant communication between the speaker and the hearer, some

unaccountable sympathy, the power to create which belongs to but one in

millions, and which, where it exists, lifts its possessor to the height

of the Art at once, and constitutes perfection.

It may be presumed that I saw this extraordinary being whenever it was

possible. But her _chef-d'oeuvre_, in my eyes, was the "wife of

Macbeth." The character seemed made for her, by something of that

instinct which in olden times combined the poet and the prophet in one.

It had the ardour and boldness mingled with the solemnity and mystery

that belonged to the character of her beauty.

Her entrance was hurried, as if she had but just glanced over the

letter, and had been eager to escape from the crowd of attendants to

reperuse it alone. She then read on, in a strong calm voice, until she

came to the passage which proved the preternatural character of the

prediction. "They have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burnt

with desire to question them further, they made themselves into air

and--_vanished_." As she was about to pronounce the last word, she

paused, drew a short breath, her whole frame was disturbed, she threw

her fine eyes upwards, and exclaimed "_Vanished_!" with a wild force,

which showed that the whole spirit of the temptation had shrunk into her

soul. The "Hail, king that shall be!" was the winding-up of the spell.

It was pronounced with the grandeur of one already by anticipation a

Queen.

Her solitary summons to her distant lord followed, like an invocation--

"Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;

And chastise with the valour of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the golden round."

The murder scene was the next triumph: her acting was that of a

triumphant fiend. I must follow these recollections no further; but the

most admirable piece of dumb show that perhaps ever was conceived, was

her "Banquet scene." That scene, from the terrible business on the

stage--the entrance of Banquo's ghost, the horrors of Macbeth, stricken

in the moment of his royal exultation, and the astonishment and alarm of

the courtiers--is one of the most thrilling and tumultuous. Yet Siddons,

sitting at the extremity of the royal hall, not having a syllable to

utter, and simply occupied with courtesies to her guests, made her

silence so expressive, that she more than divided the interest with the

powerful action going on in front. And when at last, indignant at

Macbeth's terrors, stung by conscience, and alarmed at the result of an

up-breaking of the banquet with such rumours in their lips, she rushed

towards her unhappy husband, and burst out with the words, still though

but whispered, yet intensely poured into his passive ear--

"Are you a _man_?

This is the very painting of your fear!

This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said,

Led you to Duncan!--

Why do you make such faces? When all's done,

_You look but on a stool_!"

In those accents all else was forgotten.

But her sleep-walking scene! When shall we see its "second or its

similar?" Nothing so solemn, nothing so awful, was ever seen upon the

stage. Yet it had one fault--it was too awful. She more resembled a

majestic shade rising from the tomb than a living woman, however

disturbed by wild fear and lofty passion. It is a remarkable instance of

the genius of Shakspeare, that he here found the means of giving a human

interest to a being whom he had almost exalted to the "bad eminence" of

a magnificent fiend. In this famous soliloquy, the thoughts which once

filled and fired her have totally vanished. Ambition has died; remorse

lives in its place. The diadem has disappeared; she thinks only of the

blood that stains her for ever. She is the queen no more, but an

exhausted and unhappy woman, worn down by the stings of conscience, and

with her frame dying by the disease of her soul.

But Siddons wanted the agitation, the drooping, the timidity. She looked

a living statue. She spoke with the solemn tone of a voice from a

shrine. She stood more the sepulchral avenger of regicide than the

sufferer from its convictions. Her grand voice, her fixed and marble

countenance, and her silent step, gave the impression of a supernatural

being, the genius of an ancient oracle--a tremendous Nemesis.

I have seen all the great tragedians of my day, but I have never seen an

equal to the sublime of this extraordinary actress. I have seen beauty,

youth, touching sensibility, and powerful conception; but I never saw so

complete an union of them all--and that union was the sublime.

Shakspeare must have had some such form before his mind's eye, while he

was creating the wife of Macbeth. Some magnificent and regal

countenance, some movement of native majesty, some imaginary Siddons. He

could not have gone beyond the true. She was a living Melpomene.

The business of the War-Office was not transacted in those days with the

dispatch subsequently introduced by the honest Duke of York. After a

delay of weeks I found myself still ungazetted, grew sad, angry,

impatient; and after some consideration on the various modes of getting

rid of _ennui_, which were to be found in enlisting the service of that

Great Company which extended its wings from Bombay to Bengal, as

Sheridan said, impudently enough, like the vulture covering his prey; or

in taking the chance of fortune, in the shape of cabin-boy on board one

of the thousand ships that were daily floating down the Thames, making

their way to the extremities of the earth; or in finishing my feverish

speculations in a cold bath at the bottom of the Thames itself; I did

what I felt a severer exertion than any of them--I wrote a full and true

statement of my vexations to my lordly brother.

His answer was lordly enough. He had been "so much occupied with the

numberless duties devolving upon him as landlord, magistrate,

lord-lieutenant, and fifty other things, that he absolutely had not been

able to find a moment to think of me;" and what was rather more

perplexing to my immediate sensibilities, "he had not been able to send

me a shilling. However, he did all that he could, and gave me a note to

a particular friend," Mr Elisha Mordecai of Moorfields.

There is nothing which quickens a man's movements like a depletion of

the purse; and instead of lounging at my hotel until the morning paper

brought me the scandals and pleasantries of the day before fresh for my

breakfast-table, I threw myself out of bed at an hour which I should not

have ventured to mention to any man with whom I walked arm-in-arm during

the day, and made my way in a hackney coach, to avoid the possibility of

being recognised, to the dwelling of my new patron, or rather my guide

and guardian angel.

I make no attempt to describe the navigation through which I reached

him; it was winding, dark, and dirty beyond all description, and gave

the idea of the passages of a dungeon rather than any thing else that I

could name. And in a hovel worthy to finish such a voyage of discovery,

I discovered Mr Elisha Mordecai, the man of untold opulence. For a

while, on being ushered into the office, where he sat pen in hand, I was

utterly unable to ascertain any thing of him beyond a gaunt thin figure,

who sat crouching behind a pile of papers, and beneath a small window

covered with the dirt of ages. He gave me the impression in his dungeon

of one of those toads which are found from time to time in blocks of

coal, and have lain there unbreathing and unmoving since the deluge.

However, he was a man of business, and so was I for the moment. I handed

him my brother's note; and like a ray of sunshine on the torpid snake,

it put him into immediate motion. He now took off his spectacles, as if

to indulge himself with a view of me by the naked eye; and after a

scrutinizing look, which, in another place and person, I should probably

have resented as impertinent, but which here seemed part of his

profession, he rose from his seat and ushered me into another apartment.

This room was probably his place of reception for criminals of a more

exalted order; for it was lined with foreign prints, had one or two

tolerable Dutch pictures, and a bookcase. Out of his bookcase he took

down a folio, examined it, compared the writing of my credentials with

the signatures of a book which, as Cromwell's son said of his trunk,

contained the lives and fortunes, or at least that on which depended the

lives and fortunes, of half the noble _roués_ of England, their

"promises to pay," bonds, mortgages, and post-obits, and then performed

the operation on myself. My L.2500 in prospect was mulcted of a fifth

for the trouble of realizing it; of another fifth for prompt payment,

and of another for expediting the affair of my commission. "Another such

victory would have ruined me."

However, I bore the torture well. In truth, I had so little regard for

any object but the grand one of wearing a sword and epaulette, that if

Mordecai had demanded the whole sum in fifths, I should have scarcely

winced. But my philosophy stood me in good part, for it won a grim smile

from the torturer, and even a little of his confidence.

"This," said he, running his finger down a list which looked endless, "I

call my peerage book." Turning to another of equal dimensions, "there

lies my House of Commons. Not quite as many words wasted in it as in the

Honourable House, but rather to the purpose."

Mordecai grew facetious; the feeling that he had made a handsome

morning's work of it put him into spirits, and he let me into some of

the secrets of high life, with the air of a looker-on who sees the whole

game, and intends to pocket the stakes of the fools on both sides.

"Money, Mr Marston," said my hook-nosed and keen-eyed enlightener, "is

the true business of man. It is philosophy, science, and patriotism in

one; or, at least, without it the whole three are of but little service.

Your philosopher dies in a garret, your man of science hawks telescopes,

and your patriot starves in the streets, or gets himself hanged in

honour of the 'Rights of Man.' I have known all these things, for I was

born a German, and bred among the illustrissimi of a German university.

But I determined not to live a beggar, or at least not to die one. I

left Gottingen behind on a May morning, and trudged, fought, and begged,

'borrowed' my way to London. What I am now, you see."

Probably, the glance which I involuntarily gave round the room, did not

exhibit much admiration.

"Ha," said he with a half smile, which, on his gigantic and sullen

features, looked like a smile on one of the sculptures of a mausoleum,

"you are young--you judge by appearances. Let me give you one piece of

advice: If the Italian said, 'distrust words, they are fit only to

disguise thoughts,' take a Londoner's warning, and distrust your

eyes--they are only fit to pretend to see." He paused a moment, and

turned over some memorandums. "I find," said he, "by these papers, that

I shall have occasion to leave town in the beginning of next week. You

shall then see how I live. If I am to be found in this den, it is not

for want of a liking for light and air. I am a German. I have seen

plains and mountains in my time. If I had been a fool, there I should

have remained a bear-shooter; if I were a fool here, I should act like

others of the breed, and be a fox-hunter. But I had other game in view,

and now I could sell half the estates in England, call half the

'Honourable House' to my levee, brush down an old loan, buy up a new

one, and shake the credit of every thing but the Bank of England."

This was bold speaking, and at another time I should have laughed at it;

but the times were bold, the language of the streets was bold, the

country was bold, and I, too, was bold. There was something singular in

the man; even the hovel round him had a look which added to his

influence. I listened to the Jew as one might listen to a revealer of

those secrets which find an echo in every bosom, when they are once

discovered, and on which still deeper secrets seem to depend. My

acquiescence, not the less effective for its being expressed more in

looks than words, warmed even the stern spirit of the Israelite towards

me, and he actually went the length of ordering some refreshments to be

put on the table. We eat and drank together; a new source of cordiality.

Our conversation continued long. I shall have more to say of him, and

must now proceed to other things; but it ended in my acceptance of his

invitation to his villa at Brighton, which he termed "a small thing,

simply for a week's change of air," and where he promised to give me

some curious explanations of his theory--that money was the master of

all things, men, manners, and opinions.

On one of the finest mornings of autumn, I was on the box of the Royal

Sussex Stage.

I had full leisure to admire the country, for our progress occupied

nearly the whole day. We now laugh at our slow-moving forefathers, but

is not the time coming when our thirty miles an hour will be laughed at

as much as their five? when our passage from Calais to Dover will be

made by the turn of a winch, and Paris will be within the penny-post

delivery? when the balloon will carry our letters and ourselves; until

that still more rapid period, when we shall ride on cannon-shot, and

make but a stage from London to Pekin?

On the roof of the coach I found a strong-featured and closely

wrapped-up man, who, by degrees, performed the part of my cicerone. His

knowledge of the localities was perfect; "every bush and bosky dell,"

every creek and winding, as the shore came in sight, was so familiar to

him, that I should have set him down at once for a smuggler, but for a

superiority of tone in his language, and still more from the evident

deference to him by the coachman, in those days a leading authority with

all the passengers. His occupation is now nearly o'er. Fire and water

have swept him away. His broad back, his broad grin, and his broad

buttons, are now but recollections.

My new acquaintance exhibited as perfect a knowledge of the country

residents as of its map, and nothing could be more unhesitating than his

opinions of them all, from the prince and his set, as he termed them, to

Mordecai himself. Of my Jew friend, he said, with a laugh, "There is not

a better friend to the King's Bench in all England. If you have any

thing to lose, he will strip you on the spot. If you have nothing, you

may escape, unless he can make something by having you hanged." I begged

of him to spare my new friend. "Why," said he, "he is one of my oldest

friends, and one of the cleverest fellows alive. I speak tenderly of

him, from admiration of his talents. I have a liking for the perfection

of a rogue. He is a superb fellow. You will find his 'Hermitage,' as he

calls it, a pond of gold fish. But all this you will soon learn for

yourself." The coach now stopped on a rising ground, which showed the

little fishing village beneath us, basking in the glow of sunset. My

cicerone got down, and bade me farewell. On enquiring his name from my

fellow-travellers, a group of Sussex farmers, I found a general

disinclination to touch on the subject. Even the coachman, the

established source of information on all topics, exhibited no wish to

discuss the stranger; his official loquacity was almost dumb. "He merely

believed that he was something in the navy, or in the army, or in

something or other; but he was often in those parts, and generally

travelled to London by the Royal Sussex Stage."

No country in Europe has changed its appearance more than the greater

part of England during the last fifty years. Sussex was then as wild as

the wildest heath of Yorkshire. The population, too, looked as wild as

the landscape. This was once the very land of the bold smuggler; the

haunt of the dashing defier of the customhouse officer, who in those

days generally knew his antagonist too well to interfere with his days

or nights, the run between every port of the west of France and the

coasts of the Channel, being, in fact, as familiar to both as the

lounger in Bond Street to the beau of the day.

We passed groups of men, who, when they had not the sailor's dress, had

the sailor's look; some trudging along the road-side, evidently not in

idleness; others mounted on the short rough horse of the country, and

all knowing and known by our coachman.

On our passing one group, leaning with their backs against one of the

low walls which seemed the only enclosure of this rugged region, I,

half-laughingly, hinted to one of my neighbours, a giant of a

rough-headed farmer, that "perhaps a meeting with such a party, at a

late hour, might be inconvenient, especially if the traveller had a full

purse." The fellow turned on me a countenance of ridicule. "What?" said

he, "do you take them for robbers? Heaven bless you, my lad, they could

buy the stage, horses, passengers, and all. I'll warrant you, they will

have news from over there," and he pointed towards France, "before it

gets into the newspapers, long enough. They are the richest fellows in

the county."

"Are they smugglers?" I asked, with sufficient want of tact.

"Why, no," was the answer, with a leer. "We have nothing of that breed

among us; we are all honest men. But what if a man has an acquaintance

abroad, and gets a commission to sell a cargo of tea or brandy, or

perhaps a present from a friend--what shall hinder him from going to

bring it? I'm sure, not I."

It was evidently not the "etiquette" on the roof of the Royal Sussex to

think much on the subject, and before my curiosity could reach the

length of actual imprudence, the coachman pulled up, and informed me

that I had reached the nearest turn to "the Hermitage." My valise was

lowered down, a peasant was found to carry it, and I plunged into the

depth of a lane as primitive as if it had been a path in Siberia.

It was brief, however, and in a few minutes I was within sight of the

villa. Here I at once discovered that Mordecai was a man of taste;

perhaps the very roughness of the Sussex jungle, through which I had

just come, had been suffered to remain for the sake of contrast. A small

lodge, covered with late blooming roses, let me into a narrow avenue of

all kinds of odorous shrubs; the evening sun was still strong enough to

show me glimpses of the grounds on either side, and they had all the

dressed smoothness of a parterre. The scene was so different from all

that I had been wearied of during the day, that I felt it with double

enjoyment; and the utter solitude and silence, after the rough voices of

my companions in the journey, were so soothing, that I involuntarily

paused before I approached the house, to refresh not more my senses than

my mind. As I stood leaning against a tree, and baring my hot brain and

bosom to the breeze, that rose with delicious coolness, I heard music.

It was a sweet voice, accompanied at intervals by some skilful touches

of a harp; and, from the solemnity of the measure, I supposed it to be a

hymn. Who was the minstrel? Mordecai had never mentioned to me either

wife or daughter. Well, at all events, the song was sweet. The minstrel

was a woman, and the Jew's household promised me more amusement than I

could have expected from the man of Moorfields. The song ceased, the

spell was broken, and I moved on, fully convinced that I had entered on

a scene where I might expect at least novelty; and the expectation was

then enough to have led me to the cannon's mouth or the antipodes.

* * * * *

THE VIGIL OF VENUS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN.

This old poem, which commemorates the festivities with which ancient

Rome hailed the returning brightness of spring, may, perhaps, awaken in

our readers some melancholy reflections on the bygone delights of the

same season in our own country. To the Romans, it would seem, this

period of the year never ceased to bring rejoicing holidays. There is

good reason to suppose that this poem was written in the declining times

of the empire; if so, it seems that, amidst the public misfortunes that

followed one another during that age, the people were not woe-worn and

distressed; that they were able to forget, in social pleasures, the

gradual decay of their ancient glory. Rome "smiled in death." England is

still great and powerful, but she is no longer Merry England.

Most people have heard of the Floralia, and have learned to deduce the

frolics of Maid Marian and her comrades from the Roman observances on

that festive occasion. But few are aware of the close similarity which

this poem shows to have existed between the customs of the Romans and

those of our fathers. In the denunciations of the latter by the acrid

Puritans of the 17th century, we might almost imagine that the tirade

was expressly levelled against the vigils described in the _Pervigilium

Veneris_. If the poem had ever fallen into the hands of those worthies,

it would have afforded them an additional handle for invective against

the foul ethnic superstitions which the May-games were denounced as

representing. Hear Master Stubbes, in his _Anatomie of Abuses_,

published in 1585:--

"Against May, Whitsonday, or other time, all the yung men and

maides, old men and wives, run gadding over the night to the

woods, groves, hils, and mountains, where they spend all the

night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return,

bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their

assemblies withall; and no meruaile, for there is a great Lord

present amongst them as superintendent and Lord of their

sports, namely, Sathan prince of hel. But the chiefest jewel

they bring from thence is their May-pole, (say rather their

stinking poole,) which they bring home with great veneration."

Who does not remember Lysander's appointment with Hermia:

----"in that wood, a league without the town,

Where I did meet thee once with Helena,

To do observance to a morn of May,

There will I stay for thee."

These passages point us to the time when man and nature met to rejoice

together on May-day: to the time before the days of the workhouse and

factory; when the length and breadth of the land rung to the joyaunce

and glee of the holiday-rejoicing nation, and the gay sounds careered on

fresh breezes even where now the dense atmosphere of Manchester or

Ashton glooms over the dens of torture in which withered and debauched

children are forced to their labour, and the foul haunts under the

shelter of which desperate men hatch plots of rapine and slaughter.

The poem shows that the Romans, like the English of those days,

celebrated the season by betaking themselves to the woods throughout the

night, where they kept a vigil in honour of Venus, to whose guardianship

the month of April was assigned, as being the universal generating and

producing power, and more especially to be adored as such by the Romans,

from having been, through her son Æneas, the author of their race. The

poem seems to have been composed with a view to its being sung by a

choir of maidens in their nocturnal rambles beneath the soft light of an

Italian moon. The delicious balm of that voluptuous climate breathes

through every line of it, and vividly presents to the reader's

imagination the scene of the festivity; but whether we can claim these

celebrations for our own May-day, is a doubtful point; for Wernsdorf,

who has included the Pervigilium Veneris in his edition of _Poetæ Latini

Minores_, vol. iii., maintains that it is to be referred to the

Veneralia, or feast of Venus, on the 1st of April. The Kalendar of

Constantius marks the 3d day of April as Natalis Quirini. If, then, the

morrow spoken of in the poem is to be taken to mean this birthday of

Romulus, we must suppose the vigil of three nights to have begun on the

night of the last day of March. But perhaps our readers will agree with

us, that there are quite as good grounds for attributing this vigil to

the Floralia, which commenced on the 27th of April, and ended on the

first of May. For although the rites of the Floralia were in honour of

Flora, yet we may easily conceive the principle by which the worship of

Venus, the spirit of beauty, and love, and production, would come to be

intermingled with the homage paid to the flower-goddess. And then the

three nights would denote the nights of the Floralia already past, if we

suppose the hymn to have been sung on the night before the 1st of May.

This seems more natural, as coinciding with the known length of the

festival, than Wernsdorf's hypothesis, which makes the vigil commence

before the month of Venus had opened. As regards the time of year, too,

May is far more suited than April, even in Italy, for outwatching the

Bear on woodland lawns.

The question regarding the author of the Pervigilium Veneris is still a

_lis sub judice_. Aldus, Erasmus, and Meursius, attributed it to

Catullus; but subsequent editors have, with much more probability,

contended that its age is considerably later. We may notice a scholastic

and philosophical spirit about it, which is ill-suited to the Bard of

Verona. Lipsius claimed it for the Augustan age, in consequence of the

mention of Cæsar which is introduced. But we think we may safely assume,

that the observance of this vigil grew into custom after the time of

Ovid, otherwise it is difficult to account for the total absence of all

allusion, in his Fasti, to a subject so perfectly adapted to his verse.

But we will not enter any further into a discussion which Salmasius and

Scaliger could not settle, but shall at once present our readers with

the following translation of the Pervigilium Veneris:--

He that never loved before,

Let him love to-morrow!

He that hath loved o'er and o'er,

Let him love to-morrow!

Spring, young Spring, with song and mirth,

Spring is on the newborn earth.

Spring is here, the time of love--

The merry birds pair in the grove,

And the green trees hang their tresses,

Loosen'd by the rain's caresses.

To-morrow sees the dawn of May,

When Venus will her sceptre sway,

Glorious, in her justice-hall:

There where woodland shadows fall,

On bowers of myrtle intertwined,

Many a band of love she'll bind.

He that never, &c.

To-morrow is the day when first

From the foam-world of Ocean burst,

Like one of his own waves, the bright

Dione, queen of love and light,

Amid the sea-gods' azure train,

'Mid the strange horses of the main.

He that never, &c.

She it is that lends the Hours

Their crimson glow, their jewel-flowers:

At her command the buds are seen,

Where the west-wind's breath hath been,

To swell within their dwellings green.

She abroad those dewdrops flings,

Dew that night's cool softness brings;

How the bright tears hang declining,

And glisten with a tremulous shining,

Almost of weight to drop away,

And yet too light to leave the spray.

Hence the tender plants are bold

Their blushing petals to unfold:

'Tis that dew, which through the air

Falls from heaven when night is fair,

That unbinds the moist green vest

From the floweret's maiden breast.

'Tis Venus' will, when morning glows,

'Twill be the bridal of each rose.

Then the bride-flower shall reveal,

What her veil cloth now conceal,

The blush divinest, which of yore

She caught from Venus' trickling gore,

With Love's kisses mix'd, I trow,

With blaze of fire, and rubies' glow,

And with many a crimson ray

Stolen from the birth of day.

He that never, &c.

All the nymphs the Queen of Love

Summons to the myrtle-grove;

And see ye, how her wanton boy

Comes with them to share our joy?

Yet, if Love be arm'd, they say,

Love can scarce keep holiday:

Love without his bow is straying!

Come, ye nymphs, Love goes a Maying.

His torch, his shafts, are laid aside--

From them no harm shall you betide.

Yet, I rede ye, nymphs, beware,

For your foe is passing fair;

Love is mighty, ye'll confess,

Mighty e'en in nakedness;

And most panoplied for fight

When his charms are bared to sight.

He that never, &c.

Dian, a petition we,

By Venus sent, prefer to thee:

Virgin envoys, it is meet,

Should the Virgin huntress greet:

Quit the grove, nor it profane

With the blood of quarry slain.

She would ask thee, might she dare

Hope a maiden's thought to share--

She would bid thee join us now,

Might cold maids our sport allow.

Now three nights thou may'st have seen,

Wandering through thine alleys green,

Troops of joyous friends, with flowers

Crown'd, amidst their myrtle bowers.

Ceres and Bacchus us attend,

And great Apollo is our friend;

All night we must our Vigil keep--

Night by song redeem'd from sleep.

Let Venus in the woods bear sway,

Dian, quit the grove, we pray.

He that never, &c.

Of Hybla's flowers, so Venus will'd,

Venus' judgment-seat we build.

She is judge supreme; the Graces,

As assessors, take their places.

Hybla, render all thy store

All the season sheds thee o'er,

Till a hill of bloom be found

Wide as Enna's flowery ground.

Attendant nymphs shall here be seen,

Those who delight in forest green,

Those who on mountain-top abide,

And those whom sparkling fountains hide.

All these the Queen of joy and sport

Summons to attend her court,

And bids them all of Love beware,

Although the guise of peace he wear.

He that never, &c.

Fresh be your coronals of flowers,

And green your overarching bowers,

To-morrow brings us the return

Of Ether's primal marriage-morn.

In amorous showers of rain he came

T' embrace his bride's mysterious frame,

To generate the blooming year,

And all the produce Earth does bear.

Venus still through vein and soul

Bids the genial current roll;

Still she guides its secret course

With interpenetrating force,

And breathes through heaven, and earth, and sea,

A reproductive energy.

He that never, &c.

She old Troy's extinguish'd glory

Revived in Latium's later story,

When, by her auspices, her son

Laurentia's royal damsel won.

She vestal Rhea's spotless charms

Surrender'd to the War-god's arms;

She for Romulus that day

The Sabine daughters bore away;

Thence sprung the Rhamnes' lofty name,

Thence the old Quirites came;

And thence the stock of high renown,

The blood of Romulus, handed down

Through many an age of glory pass'd,

To blaze in Cæsar's at last.

He that never, &c.

All rural nature feels the glow

Of quickening passion through it flow.

Love, in rural scenes of yore,

They say, his goddess-mother bore;

Received on Earth's sustaining breast,

Th' ambrosial infant sunk to rest;

And him the wild-flowers, o'er his head

Bending, with sweetest kisses fed.

He that never, &c.

On yellow broom out yonder, see,

The mighty bulls lie peacefully.

Each animal of field or grove

Owns faithfully the bond of love.

The flocks of ewes, beneath the shade,

Around their gallant rams are laid;

And Venus bids the birds awake

To pour their song through plain and brake.

Hark! the noisy pools reply

To the swan's hoarse harmony;

And Philomel is vocal now,

Perch'd upon a poplar-bough.

Thou scarce would'st think that dying fall

Could ought but love's sweet griefs recall;

Thou scarce would'st gather from her song

The tale of brother's barbarous wrong.

She sings, but I must silent be:--

When will the spring-tide come for me?

When, like the swallow, spring's own bird,

Shall my faint twittering notes be heard?

Alas! the muse, while silent I

Remain'd, hath gone and pass'd me by,

Nor Phoebus listens to my cry.

And thus forgotten, I await,

By silence lost, Amyclæ's fate.

* * * * *

CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY.

RISE OF THE KIUPRILI FAMILY--SIEGE OF CANDIA.

NO. IX.

The restraint which the ferocious energy of Sultan Mourad-Ghazi, during

the latter years of his reign, had succeeded in imposing on the

turbulence of the Janissaries,[1] vanished at his death; and for many

years subsequently, the domestic annals of the Ottoman capital are

filled with the details of the intrigues of women and eunuchs within the

palace, and the sanguinary feuds and excesses of the soldiery without.

The Sultan Ibrahim, the only surviving brother and successor of Mourad,

was in his twenty-fifth year at the time of his accession; but he had

been closely immured in the seraglio from the moment of his birth; and

the dulness of his temperament (to which he probably owed his escape

from the bowstring, by which the lives of his three brothers had been

terminated by order of Mourad) had never been improved by cultivation.

Destitute alike of capacity and inclination for the toils of government,

he remained constantly immersed in the pleasures of the harem; while his

mother, the Sultana-Walidah Kiosem, (surnamed _Mah-peiker_, or the

_Moon-face_,) who had been the favourite of the harem under Ahmed I.,

and was a woman of extraordinary beauty and masculine understanding,

kept the administration of the state almost wholly in her own hands. The

talents of this princess, aided by the ministers of her selection, for

some time prevented the incompetency of the sultan from publicly

manifesting itself; but Ibrahim at last shook off the control of his

mother, and speedily excited the indignant murmurs of the troops and the

people by the publicity with which he abandoned himself to the most

degrading sensuality. The sanctity of the harem and of the bath had

hitherto been held inviolate by even the most despotic of the Ottoman

sovereigns; but this sacred barrier was broken through by the unbridled

passions of Ibrahim, who at length ventured to seize in the public baths

the daughter of the mufti, and, after detaining her for some days in the

palace, sent her back with ignominy to her father. This unheard-of

outrage at once kindled the smouldering discontent into a flame; the

Moslem population rose in instant and universal revolt; and a scene

ensued almost without parallel in history--the deposition of an absolute

sovereign by form of law. The grand-vizir Ahmed, and other panders to

the vices of the sultan, were seized and put to death on the place of

public execution; while an immense crowd of soldiers, citizens, and

janissaries, assembling before the palace of the mufti early on the

morning of August 8, 1648, received from him a _fetwa_, or decree, to

the effect that the sultan (designated as "Ibrahim Abdul-Rahman

Effendi") had, by his habitual immorality and disregard of law,

forfeited all claim to be considered as a true believer, and was

therefore incapable of reigning over the Faithful. The execution of this

sentence was entrusted to the Aga of the Janissaries, the Silihdar or

grand sword-bearer, and the Kadhi-asker or chief judge of Anatolia, who,

repairing to the seraglio, attended by a multitude of military officers

and the _ulemah_, proceeded without ceremony to announce to Ibrahim that

his rule was at an end. His furious remonstrances were drowned by the

rude voice of the Kadhi Abdul-Aziz Effendi,[2] who boldly reproached him

with his vices. "Thou hast gone astray," said he, "from the paths in

which thy glorious ancestors walked, and hast trampled under foot both

law and religion, and thou art no longer the padishah of the Moslems!"

He was at last conducted to the same apartment whence he had been taken

to ascend the throne, and where, ten days later, his existence was

terminated by the bowstring; while the Sultana-Walidah, (whose

acquiescence in this extraordinary revolution had been previously

secured,) led into the _salamlik_ (hall of audience) her eldest grandson

Mohammed,[3] an infant scarcely seven years old, who was forthwith

seated on the imperial sofa, and received the homage of the dignitaries

of the realm.

[1] See "Chapters of Turkish History," No. III., November 1840.

[2] He was afterwards, in 1651, mufti for a few months; but is

better known as an historian, (under the appellation of

Kara-Tchelibi-Zadah,) and as having been tutor to

Ahmed-Kiuprili.

[3] His name, according to Evliya, was originally Yusuf, but was

changed to Mohammed on the entreaty of the ladies of the

seraglio, who said that Yusuf was the name of a slave.

Sultan Mohammed IV., afterwards surnamed _Avadji_, or the Hunter, who

was destined to fill the throne of the Ottoman Empire during one of the

most eventful periods of its history, possessed qualifications which, if

his education had not been interrupted by his early accession to supreme

power, might have entitled him to a high place among the monarchs of his

line. Unlike most of the imperial family, he was of a spare sinewy form,

and lofty stature; and his features are said by Evliya to have been

remarkably handsome, though his forehead was disfigured by a deep scar

which he had received in his infancy, by being thrown by his father, in

an access of brutal passion, into a cistern in the gardens of the

seraglio; and a contemporary Venetian chronicler says that his dark

complexion and vivid restless eye gave him rather the aspect of a

_Zigano_, or gipsy, than an Osmanli. In the first years of his reign,

his grandmother, the Walidah Kiosem, acted as regent; but the rule of a

woman and a child was little able to curb the turbulent soldiery of the

capital; and the old feuds between the spahis and janissaries, which had

been dormant since the death of Abaza, broke out afresh with redoubled

violence. The war in Crete, which had been commenced under Ibrahim,

languished for want of troops and supplies; while the rival military

factions fought, sword in hand, in front of the imperial palace, and

filled Constantinople with pillage and massacre. The janissaries, who

were supported by Kiosem, for some time maintained the ascendency; but

this ambitious princess was at length cut off by an intrigue, in the

interior of the harem, fomented by the mother of Mohammed, who suspected

her of a design to prolong her own sway by the removal of the sultan, in

favour of a still younger son of Ibrahim. Seized in the midst of the

night of September 3, 1651, by the eunuchs whom her rival had gained,

Kiosem was strangled (according to a report preserved by Evliya) with

the braids of her own long hair; and the sultan was exhibited at

daybreak by the grand-vizir Siawush-Pasha to the people, who thronged

round the palace on the rumour of this domestic tragedy, to assure them

of the personal safety of their youthful sovereign.

The supreme power was now lodged in the hands of the young Sultana

Walidah, and her confidant the Kislar-Aga; but their inexperience was

little qualified to encounter the task which had wellnigh baffled the

energies of Kiosem; and the expedient of frequently changing the

grand-vizir, in obedience to the requisition of which ever party was for

the time in the ascendant, prevented the measures of government from

acquiring even a shadow of consistence or stability. Twelve vizirs,

within eight years from the deposition of Ibrahim, had successively held

the reins of power for short periods; and not less than six had been

raised to, and deposed from, that precarious dignity, within the last

ten months, while the audacity of the troops, and the helplessness of

the executive, had reached an unparalleled climax. In a memorable

insurrection, arising from the depreciation of the coinage, which marked

the spring of 1656, the revolters, not contented with their usual

license of plunder and bloodshed, forced their way into the palace, and

exacted from the young sultan the surrender of two of his favourite

domestics, who were instantly slaughtered before his eyes; while various

obnoxious public functionaries were dragged to the At-meidan, and

summarily hanged on the branches of a large plane-tree;[4] and for

several weeks this proscription was continued, till the cry of "Take him

to the plane-tree!" became a watchword of as well-known and fearful

import, as that of "A la lanterne!" in later times. In this emergency,

when the fabric of government seemed on the verge of dissolution, an

ancient Anatolian pasha, Mohammed-Kiuprili, who had lately repaired to

the capital, was named by her confidential advisers to the

Sultana-Walidah as a man whose eminent discernment and sagacity, not

less than his fearless intrepidity, rendered him especially fitted for

the task of stilling the troubled waters. In opposition to these views

it was contended, that the poverty of the proposed premier would prevent

his securing the adherence of the troops by the largesses which they had

been accustomed to receive, and the project was apparently abandoned;

but the incapacity and unpopularity of the grand-vizir, Mohammed-Pasha,

(surnamed _Egri_, or the Crooked,) soon made it obvious that a fresh

change alone could prevent another convulsion. On the 15th September

1656, therefore, in a fortunate[5] hour for the distracted empire,

Kiuprili was summoned to the presence of the sultan, who had now,

nominally at least, assumed the direction of affairs, and received from

his hands the seals of office.

[4] The Turkish historian, Naima, fancifully compares this plane

to the fabulous tree in the islands of Wak-Wak, the fruit of

which consisted of human heads, as is fully detailed in the

romance of Hatem Tai, besides various passages of the Thousand

and One Nights. Under this same plane, by a singular instance of

retribution, the heads of the janissaries massacred in the

At-meidan in 1826, were piled by order of Sultan Mahmood.

[5] The Turkish annalists do not fail to remark, that Kiuprili

crossed the imperial threshold at the moment when the call to

noon prayers was resounding from the minarets--an evident token

of the Divine protection extended to him!