"Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get rid of,

and never expected to see any more. You don't deny that?"

"No," said I.

"Very well! Then I came into possession of ten pounds--"

"The same ten pounds," I hinted.

"That has nothing to do with it!" returned Richard. "I have got ten

pounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can afford to

spend it without being particular."

In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice

of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good, he

carried that sum to his credit, and drew upon it.

"Let me see!" he would say. "I saved five pounds out of the

brickmaker's affair; so, if I have a good rattle to London and back in

a post-chaise, and put that down at four pounds, I shall have saved

one. And it's a very good thing to save one, let me tell you; a penny

saved, is a penny got!"

I believe Richard's was as frank and generous a nature as there

possibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and, in the midst of all his

wild restlessness, was so gentle, that I knew him like a brother in

a few weeks. His gentleness was natural to him, and would have shown

itself, abundantly, even without Ada's influence; but, with it, he

became one of the most winning of companions, always so ready to be

interested, and always so happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. I am sure

that I, sitting with them, and walking with them, and talking with

them, and noticing from day to day how they went on, falling deeper and

deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and each shyly thinking

that this love was the greatest of secrets, perhaps not yet suspected

even by the other--I am sure that I was scarcely less enchanted than

they were, and scarcely less pleased with the pretty dream.

We were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast Mr.

Jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription said,

"From Boythorn? Ay, ay!" and opened and read it with evident pleasure,

announcing to us, in a parenthesis, when he was about half-way through,

that Boythorn was "coming down" on a visit. Now, who was Boythorn? we

all thought. And I dare say we all thought, too--I am sure I did, for

one--would Boythorn at all interfere with what was going forward?

"I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn," said Mr.

Jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, "more than

five-and-forty years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in the

world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then the loudest

boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was then the

heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest

and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow."

"In stature, sir?" asked Richard.

"Pretty well, Rick, in that respect," said Mr. Jarndyce; "being some

ten years older than I, and a couple of inches taller, with his head

thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his hands

like a clean blacksmith's, and his lungs!--there's no simile for his

lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the house

shake."

As Mr. Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend Boythorn, we

observed the favorable omen that there was not the least indication of

any change in the wind.

"But it's the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the

passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick--and Ada, and

little Cobweb, too, for you are all interested in a visitor!--that I

speak of," he pursued. "His language is as sounding as his voice. He

is always in extremes: perpetually in the superlative degree. In his

condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an Ogre,

from what he says; and I believe he has the reputation of one with some

people. There! I tell you no more of him beforehand. You must not be

surprised to see him take me under his protection; for he has never

forgotten that I was a low boy at school, and that our friendship began

in his knocking two of my head tyrant's teeth out (he says six) before

breakfast. Boythorn and his man," to me, "will be here this afternoon,

my dear."

I took care that the necessary preparations were made for Mr.

Boythorn's reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with some

curiosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear.

The dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The dinner was

put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light

but the blaze, when the hall-door suddenly burst open, and the hall

resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and in

a stentorian tone:

"We have been misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most abandoned ruffian, who

told us to take the turning to the right instead of to the left. He is

the most intolerable scoundrel on the face of the earth. His father

must have been a most consummate villain, ever to have had such a son.

I would have that fellow shot without the least remorse!"

"Did he do it on purpose?" Mr. Jarndyce inquired.

"I have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his whole

existence in misdirecting travelers!" returned the other. "By my soul,

I thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever beheld, when he was

telling me to take the turning to the right. And yet I stood before

that fellow face to face, and didn't knock his brains out!"

"Teeth, you mean?" said Mr. Jarndyce.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, really making the whole

house vibrate. "What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha!--And

that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the countenance

of that fellow, when he was a boy, was the blackest image of perfidy,

cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a field of

scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled despot in the

streets to-morrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree!"

"I have no doubt of it," said Mr. Jarndyce. "Now, will you come

up-stairs?"

"By my soul, Jarndyce," returned his guest, who seemed to refer to his

watch, "if you had been married, I would have turned back at the garden

gate, and gone away to the remotest summits of the Himalaya Mountains,

sooner than I would have presented myself at this unseasonable hour."

"Not quite so far, I hope?" said Mr. Jarndyce.

"By my life and honor, yes!" cried the visitor. "I wouldn't be guilty

of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house waiting all

this time, for any earthly consideration. I would infinitely rather

destroy myself--infinitely rather!"

Talking thus, they went up-stairs; and presently we heard him in his

bed-room thundering. "Ha, ha, ha!" and again, "Ha, ha, ha!" until the

flattest echo in the neighborhood seemed to catch the contagion, and to

laugh as enjoyingly as he did, or as we did when we heard him laugh.

We all conceived a prepossession in his favor; for there was a sterling

quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous healthy voice, and in the

roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word he spoke, and

in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go off like blank

cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly prepared to have it so

confirmed by his appearance, when Mr. Jarndyce presented him. He was

not only a very handsome old gentleman--upright and stalwart as he had

been described to us--with a massive gray head, a fine composure of

face when silent, a figure that might have become corpulent but for

his being so continually in earnest that he gave it no rest, and a

chin that might have subsided into a double chin but for the vehement

emphasis in which it was constantly required to assist; but he was such

a true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously polite, his face was

lighted by a smile of so much sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed

so plain that he had nothing to hide, but showed himself exactly as

he was--incapable (as Richard said) of any thing on a limited scale,

and firing away with those blank great guns, because he carried no

small arms whatever--that really I could not help looking at him with

equal pleasure as he sat at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed

with Ada and me, or was led by Mr. Jarndyce into some great volley of

superlatives, or threw up his head like a blood-hound, and gave out

that tremendous Ha, ha, ha!

"You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?" said Mr. Jarndyce.

"By Heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!" replied the

other. "He is the most wonderful creature! I wouldn't take ten thousand

guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole support,

in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment, a

phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most astonishing

birds that ever lived!"

The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so tame

that he was brought down by Mr. Boythorn's man, on his forefinger, and,

after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted on his master's

head. To hear Mr. Boythorn presently expressing the most implacable and

passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of a creature quietly

perched on his forehead, was to have a good illustration of his

character, I thought.

"By my soul, Jarndyce," he said, very gently holding up a bit of bread

to the canary to peck at, "if I were in your place, I would seize every

Master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning, and shake him until

his money rolled out of his pockets, and his bones rattled in his skin.

I would have a settlement out of somebody, by fair means or by foul. If

you would empower me to do it, I would do it for you with the greatest

satisfaction!" (All this time, the very small canary was eating out of

his hand).

"I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at

present," returned Mr. Jarndyce, laughing, "that it would be greatly

advanced, even by the legal process of shaking the Bench and the whole

Bar."

"There never was such an infernal caldron as that Chancery, on the

face of the earth!" said Mr. Boythorn. "Nothing but a mine below it on

a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and precedents

collected in it, and every functionary belonging to it also, high

and low, upward and downward, from its son the Accountant-General to

its father the Devil, and the whole blown to atoms with ten thousand

hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it in the least!"

It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he

recommended this strong measure of reform. When we laughed, he threw up

his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country seemed

to echo to his Ha, ha, ha! It had not the least effect in disturbing

the bird, whose sense of security was complete; and who hopped about

the table with its quick head now on this side and now on that, turning

its bright sudden eye on its master, as if he were no more than another

bird.

"But how do you and your neighbor get on about the disputed right of

way?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "You are not free from the toils of the law

yourself."

"The fellow has brought actions against me for trespass, and I have

brought actions against _him_ for trespass," returned Mr. Boythorn. "By

Heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally impossible

that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir Lucifer."

"Complimentary to our distant relation!" said my Guardian, laughingly,

to Ada and Richard.

"I would beg Miss Clare's pardon and Mr. Carstone's pardon," resumed

our visitor, "if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of the

lady, and the smile of the gentleman, that it is quite unnecessary, and

that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance."

"Or he keeps us," suggested Richard.

"By my soul!" exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley,

"that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the

most stiff-necked, arrogant, imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by

some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but

a walking-stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly

conceited and consummate blockheads!--But it's no matter; he should not

shut up my path, if he were fifty baronets melted into one, and living

in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory balls in

a Chinese carving. The fellow, by his agent, or secretary, or somebody,

writes to me, 'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents his compliments

to Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, and has to call his attention to the fact

that the green pathway by the old parsonage-house now the property of

Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, is Sir Leicester's right of way, being in fact

a portion of the park of Chesney Wold; and that Sir Leicester finds it

convenient to close up the same.' I write to the fellow, 'Mr. Lawrence

Boythorn presents his compliments to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,

and has to call his attention to the fact that he totally denies the

whole of Sir Leicester Dedlock's positions on every possible subject,

and has to add, in reference to closing up the pathway, that he will

be glad to see the man who may undertake to do it.' The fellow sends

a most abandoned villain with one eye, to construct a gateway. I play

upon that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine, until the breath is

nearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night. I

chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to come

over the fence, and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man-traps,

fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the engine--resolve

to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the existence of those

lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass; I bring actions for

trespass. He brings actions for assault and battery; I defend them, and

continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha, ha!"

To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have

thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him, at the very same time,

looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb, and softly smoothing

its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought him the

gentlest. To hear him laugh, and see the broad good-nature of his face

then, one might have supposed that he had not a care in the world, or a

dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole existence was a summer joke.

"No, no," he said, "no closing up of my paths, by any Dedlock! Though

I willingly confess," here he softened in a moment, "that Lady Dedlock

is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I would do any

homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet with a head seven hundred

years thick, may. A man who joined his regiment at twenty, and, within

a week, challenged the most imperious and presumptuous coxcomb of a

commanding officer that ever drew the breath of life through a tight

waist--and got broke for it--is not the man to be walked over, by all

the Sir Lucifers, dead or alive, locked or unlocked. Ha, ha! ha."

"Nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over, either?" said my

Guardian.

"Most assuredly not!" said Mr. Boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder

with an air of protection, that had something serious in it, though

he laughed. "He will stand by the low boy, always. Jarndyce, you may

rely upon him! But speaking of this trespass--with apologies to Miss

Clare and Miss Summerson for the length at which I have pursued so dry

a subject--is there nothing for me from your men, Kenge and Carboy?"

"I think not, Esther?" said Mr. Jarndyce.

"Nothing, Guardian."

"Much obliged!" said Mr. Boythorn. "Had no need to ask, after even

my slight experience of Miss Summerson's forethought for every one

about her." (They all encouraged me; they were determined to do it.)

"I inquired because, coming from Lincolnshire, I of course have not

yet been in town, and I thought some letters might have been sent down

here. I dare say they will report progress to-morrow morning."

I saw him so often, in the course of the evening, which passed very

pleasantly, contemplate Richard and Ada with an interest and a

satisfaction that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat

at a little distance from the piano listening to the music--and he

had small occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond of music,

for his face showed it--that I asked my Guardian, as we sat at the

backgammon board, whether Mr. Boythorn had ever been married.

"No," said he. "No."

"But he meant to be?" said I.

"How did you find out that?" he returned, with a smile.

"Why, Guardian," I explained, not without reddening a little at

hazarding what was in my thoughts, "there is something so tender in his

manner, after all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us, and--"

Mr. Jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was sitting, as I have just

described him.

I said no more.

"You are right, little woman," he answered. "He was all but married,

once. Long ago. And once."

"Did the lady die?"

"No--but she died to him. That time has had its influence on all his

later life. Would you suppose him to have a head and a heart full of

romance yet?"

"I think, Guardian, I might have supposed so. But it is easy to say

that, when you have told me so."

"He has never since been what he might have been," said Mr. Jarndyce,

"and now you see him in his age with no one near him but his servant,

and his little yellow friend. It's your throw, my dear!"

I felt, from my Guardian's manner, that beyond this point I could not

pursue the subject without changing the wind. I therefore fore-bore to

ask any further questions. I was interested, but not curious. I thought

a little while about this old love story in the night, when I was

awakened by Mr. Boythorn's lusty snoring; and I tried to do that very

difficult thing--imagine old people young again, and invested with the

graces of youth. But I fell asleep before I had succeeded, and dreamed

of the days when I lived in my godmother's house. I am not sufficiently

acquainted with such subjects, to know whether it is at all remarkable

that I almost always dreamed of that period of my life.

With the morning, there came a letter from Messrs. Kenge and Carboy to

Mr. Boythorn, informing him that one of their clerks would wait upon

him at noon. As it was the day of the week on which I paid the bills,

and added up my books, and made all the household affairs as compact as

possible, I remained at home while Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard, took

advantage of a very fine day to make a little excursion. Mr. Boythorn

was to wait for Kenge and Carboy's clerk, and then was to go on foot to

meet them on their return.

Well! I was full of business, examining tradesmen's books, adding up

columns, paying money, filing receipts, and I dare say making a great

bustle about it, when Mr. Guppy was announced and shown in. I had had

some idea that the clerk who was to be sent down, might be the young

gentleman who had met me at the coach-office; and I was glad to see

him, because he was associated with my present happiness.

I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He had an

entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-kid

gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colors, a large hot-house flower

in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little finger. Besides

which, he quite scented the dining-room with bear's-grease and other

perfumery. He looked at me with an attention that quite confused me,

when I begged him to take a seat until the servant should return; and

as he sat there, crossing and uncrossing his legs in a corner, and I

asked him if he had had a pleasant ride, and hoped that Mr. Kenge was

well, I never looked at him but I found him looking at me, in the same

scrutinizing and curious way.

When the request was brought to him that he would go up-stairs to Mr.

Boythorn's room, I mentioned that he would find lunch prepared for him

when he came down, of which Mr. Jarndyce hoped he would partake. He

said with some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door, "Shall I

have the honor of finding you here, Miss?" I replied yes, I should be

there; and he went out with a bow and another look.

I thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently much

embarrassed; and I fancied that the best thing I could do, would be to

wait until I saw that he had every thing he wanted, and then to leave

him to himself. The lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some

time on the table. The interview with Mr. Boythorn was a long one--and

a stormy one too, I should think; for, although his room was at some

distance, I heard his loud voice rising every now and then like a high

wind, and evidently blowing perfect broadsides of denunciation.

At last Mr. Guppy came back, looking something the worse for the

conference.

"My eye, miss," he said, in a low voice, "he's a Tartar!"

"Pray take some refreshment, sir," said I.

Mr. Guppy sat down at the table, and began nervously sharpening the

carving-knife on the carving-fork; still looking at me (as I felt

quite sure, without looking at him) in the same unusual manner. The

sharpening lasted so long, that at last I felt a kind of obligation on

me to raise my eyes, in order that I might break the spell under which

he seemed to labor, of not being able to leave off.

He immediately looked at the dish, and began to carve.

"What will you take yourself, miss? You'll take a morsel of something?"

"No, thank you," said I.

"Shan't I give you a piece of any thing at all, miss?" said Mr. Guppy,

hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine.

"Nothing, thank you," said I. "I have only waited to see that you have

every thing you want. Is there any thing I can order for you?"

"No, I am much obliged to you, miss, I'm sure. I've every thing I can

require to make me comfortable--at least I--not comfortable--I'm never

that:" he drank off two more glasses of wine, one after another.

I thought I had better go.

"I beg your pardon, miss?" said Mr. Guppy, rising, when he saw me rise.

"But would you allow me the favor of a minute's private conversation?"

Not knowing what to say, I sat down again.

"What follows is without prejudice, miss?" said Mr. Guppy, anxiously

bringing a chair toward my table.

"I don't understand what you mean," said I, wondering.

"It's one of our law terms, miss. You won't make any use of it to my

detriment, at Kenge and Carboy's or elsewhere. If our conversation

shouldn't lead to any thing, I am to be as I was, and am not to be

prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In short, it's in

total confidence."

"I am at a loss, sir," said I, "to imagine what you can have to

communicate in total confidence to me whom you have never seen but

once; but I should be very sorry to do you any injury."

"Thank you, miss. I'm sure of it--that's quite sufficient." All this

time Mr. Guppy was either planing his forehead with his handkerchief,

or tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the palm of his right

"If you would excuse my taking another glass of wine, miss, I think it

might assist me in getting on, without a continual choke that can not

fail to be mutually unpleasant."

He did so, and came back again. I took the opportunity of moving well

behind my table.

"You wouldn't allow me to offer you one, would you, miss?" said Mr.

Guppy, apparently refreshed.

"Not any," said I.

"Not half a glass?" said Mr. Guppy; "quarter? No! Then, to proceed. My

present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and Carboy's, is two pound

a week. When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it was

one-fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened period.

A rise of five has since taken place, and a further rise of five is

guaranteed at the expiration of a term not exceeding twelve months from

the present date. My mother has a little property, which takes the form

of a small life annuity; upon which she lives in an independent though

unassuming manner, in the Old Street Road. She is eminently calculated

for a mother-in-law. She never interferes, is all for peace, and her

disposition easy. She has her failings--as who has not?--but I never

knew her to do it when company was present; at which time you may

freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt liquors. My own abode is

lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is lowly, but airy, open at

the back, and considered one of the 'ealthiest outlets. Miss Summerson,

in the mildest language, I adore you! Would you be so kind as to allow

me (as I may say) to file a declaration--to make an offer!"

Mr. Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table, and

not much frightened. I said, "Get up from that ridiculous position

immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise

and ring the bell!"

"Hear me out, miss!" said Mr. Guppy, folding his hands.

"I can not consent to hear another word, sir," I returned, "unless you

get up from the carpet directly, and go and sit down at the table, as

you ought to do if you have any sense at all."

[Illustration: IN RE GUPPY. EXTRAORDINARY PROCEEDINGS.]

He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so.

"Yet what a mockery it is, miss," he said, with his hand upon his

heart, and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the tray,

"to be stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul recoils from

food at such a moment, miss."

"I beg you to conclude," said I; "you have asked me to hear you out,

and I beg you to conclude."

"I will, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "As I love and honor, so likewise I

obey. Would that I could make Thee the subject of that vow, before the

shrine!"

"That is quite impossible," said I, "and entirely out of the question."

"I am aware," said Mr. Guppy, leaning forward over the tray, and

regarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were not

directed to him, with his late intent look, "I am aware that in a

worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a

poor one. But, Miss Summerson! Angel!--No, don't ring!--I have been

brought up in a sharp school, and am accustomed to a variety of general

practice. Though a young man, I have ferreted out evidence, got up

cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your hand, what means might I

not find of advancing your interests, and pushing your fortunes! What

might I not get to know, nearly concerning you? I know nothing now,

certainly; but what _might_ I not, if I had your confidence, and you

set me on?"

I told him that he addressed my interest, or what he supposed to be my

interest, quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination; and

he would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go away

immediately.

"Cruel Miss," said Mr. Guppy, "hear but another word! I think you

must have seen that I was struck with those charms, on the day when

I waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I

could not forbear a tribute to those charms when I put up the steps

of the 'ackney-coach. It was a feeble tribute to Thee, but it was

well meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. I have

walked up and down, of an evening, opposite Jellyby's house, only to

look upon the bricks that once contained Thee. This out of to-day,

quite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, which was its

pretended object, went, was planned by me alone for Thee alone. If I

speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my respectful

wretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it."

"I should be pained, Mr. Guppy," said I, rising and putting my hand

upon the bell-rope, "to do you, or any one who was sincere, the

injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably

expressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your good

opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank

you. I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not proud. I

hope," I think I added, without very well knowing what I said, "that

you will now go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish,

and attend to Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's business."

"Half a minute, miss!" cried Mr. Guppy, checking me as I was about to

ring. "This has been without prejudice?"

"I will never mention it," said I, "unless you should give me future

occasion to do so."

"A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better--at any

time, however distant, _that's_ no consequence, for my feelings can

never alter--of any thing I have said, particularly what might I not

do--Mr. William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or, if removed, or

dead (of blighted hopes or any thing of that sort), care of Mrs. Guppy,

three hundred and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient."

I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr. Guppy, laying his written

card upon the table, and making a dejected bow, departed. Raising my

eyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he had

passed the door.

I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments,

and getting through plenty of business. Then I arranged my desk, and

put every thing away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought

I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went

up-stairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh

about it, and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry

about it. In short I was in a flutter for a little while; and felt as

if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been

since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the garden.

CHAPTER X.--THE LAW-WRITER.

On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, more

particularly, in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby, Law

Stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook's Court,

at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby has dealt in all sorts

of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls of parchment;

in paper--foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey-brown, and

blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, ink, India-rubber,

pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers; in red-tape, and green

ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs, diaries, and law lists; in string

boxes, rulers, inkstands--glass and leaden, penknives, scissors,

bodkins, and other small office-cutlery; in short, in articles too

numerous to mention; ever since he was out of his time, and went into

partnership with Peffer. On that occasion, Cook's Court was in a manner

revolutionized by the new inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER and

SNAGSBY, displacing the time-honored and not easily to be deciphered

legend, PEFFER, only. For smoke, which is the London ivy, had so

wreathed itself round Peffer's name, and clung to his dwelling-place,

that the affectionate parasite quite overpowered the parent tree.

Peffer is never seen in Cook's Court now. He is not expected there,

for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the church-yard

of St. Andrew's, Holborn, with the wagons and hackney-coaches roaring

past him, all the day and half the night, like one great dragon. If he

ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest, to air himself again in

Cook's Court, until admonished to return by the crowing of the sanguine

cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street, whose ideas

of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he knows from

his personal observation next to nothing about it--if Peffer ever do

revisit the pale glimpses of Cook's Court, which no law-stationer in

the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly, and no one is the

worse or wiser.

In his life-time, and likewise in the period of Snagsby's "time" of

seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer, in the same law-stationering

premises, a niece--a short, shrewd niece, something too violently

compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like a sharp autumn

evening, inclining to be frosty toward the end. The Cook's-Courtiers

had a rumor flying among them, that the mother of this niece did, in

her daughter's childhood, moved by too jealous a solicitude that her

figure should approach perfection, lace her up every morning with her

maternal foot against the bed-post for a stronger hold and purchase;

and further, that she exhibited internally pints of vinegar and

lemon-juice: which acids, they held, had mounted to the nose and temper

of the patient. With whichsoever of the many tongues of Rumour this

frothy report originated, it either never reached, or never influenced,

the ears of young Snagsby; who, having wooed and won its fair subject,

on his arrival at man's estate, entered into two partnerships at once.

So now, in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece are

one; and the niece still cherishes her figure--which, however tastes

may differ, is unquestionably so far precious, that there is mighty

little of it.

Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the

neighbors' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed

from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's Court very often. Mr.

Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet

tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man, with a shining

head, and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He

tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook's

Court, in his gray shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at

the clouds; or stands behind a desk in his dark shop, with a heavy

flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin, in company with his two

'Prentices; he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From

beneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in its

grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in the

voice already mentioned; and, haply on some occasions, when these reach

a sharper pitch than usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the 'Prentices, "I

think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!"

This proper name, so used by Mr. Snagsby, has before now sharpened the

wit of the Cook's-Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the name of

Mrs. Snagsby; seeing that she might with great force and expression be

termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character. It is, however,

the possession, and the only possession, except fifty shillings per

annum and a very small box indifferently filled with clothing, of

a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to have been

christened Augusta); who, although she was farmed or contracted for,

during her growing time, by an amiable benefactor of his species

resident at Tooting, and can not fail to have been developed under

the most favorable circumstances, "has fits"--which the parish can't

account for.

Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten

years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits; and

is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron Saint,

that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink,

or the copper, or the dinner, or any thing else that happens to be

near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is

a satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the 'Prentices, who

feel that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in

the breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can

always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr. Snagsby, who

thinks it a charity to keep her. The Law-stationer's establishment is,

in Guster's eyes, a temple of plenty and splendor. She believes the

little drawing-room up-stairs, always kept, as one may say, with its

hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apartment in

Christendom. The view it commands of Cook's Court, at one end (not to

mention a squint into Cursitor Street), and of Coavins's the Sheriff's

Officer's backyard at the other, she regards as a prospect of unequaled

beauty. The portraits it displays in oil--and plenty of it too--of Mr.

Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby, and of Mrs. Snagsby looking at Mr.

Snagsby, are in her eyes as achievements of Raphael or Titian. Guster

has some recompense for her many privations.

Mr. Snagsby refers every thing not in the practical mysteries of

the business, to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches

the Tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on

Sundays, licenses Mr. Snagsby's entertainments, and acknowledges

no responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner;

insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the

neighboring wives, a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and

even out in Holborn, who, in any domestic passages of arms, habitually

call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the

wives') position and Mrs. Snagsby's, and their (the husbands') behavior

and Mr. Snagsby's. Rumor, always flying, bat-like, about Cook's Court,

and skimming in and out at every body's windows, does say that Mrs.

Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive; and that Mr. Snagsby is sometimes

worried out of house and home, and if he had the spirit of a mouse he

wouldn't stand it. It is even observed that the wives who quote him

to their self-willed husbands as a shining example, in reality look

down upon him; and that nobody does so with greater superciliousness

than one particular lady, whose lord is more than suspected of laying

his umbrella on her as an instrument of correction. But these vague

whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby's being, in his way, rather

a meditative and poetical man; loving to walk in Staple Inn in the

summer time, and to observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves

are: also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a Sunday afternoon, and

to remark (if in good spirits) that there were old times once, and

that you'd find a stone coffin or two, now under that chapel, he'll be

bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his imagination, too, by

thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices and Masters of the Rolls,

who are deceased, and he gets such a flavor of the country out of

telling the two 'Prentices how he has heard say that a brook "as clear

as crystal" once ran down the middle of Holborn, when Turnstile really

was a turnstile leading slap away into the meadows--gets such a flavor

of the country out of this, that he never wants to go there.

The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully

effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby, standing at his

shop-door, looking up at the clouds, sees a crow, who is out late, skim

westward over the leaden slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The

crow flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Garden, into

Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr.

Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now; and in those

shrunken fragment of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts.

But its roomy staircases, passages, and ante-chambers still remain;

and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman helmet and

celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers,

clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache--as would seem

to be Allegory's object always, more or less. Here, among his many

boxes labeled with transcendent names, lives Mr. Tulkinghorn, when not

speechlessly at home in country-houses where the great ones of the

earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day, quiet at his table. An

Oyster of the old school, whom nobody can open.

Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of the

present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from attention,

able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned mahogany and

horse-hair chairs, not easily lifted, obsolete tables with spindle-legs

and dusty baize covers, presentation prints of the holders of great

titles in the last generation, or the last but one, environ him. A

thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles the floor where he sits, attended

by two candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks, that give a very

insufficient light to his large room. The titles on the backs of his

books have retired into the binding; every thing that can have a lock

has got one; no key is visible. Very few loose papers are about. He

has some manuscript near him, but is not referring to it. With the

round top of an inkstand, and two broken bits of sealing-wax, he is

silently and slowly working out whatever train of indecision is in

his mind. Now, the inkstand top is in the middle: now, the red bit of

sealing-wax, now the black bit. That's not it. Mr. Tulkinghorn must

gather them all up, and begin again.

Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory staring

down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and he cutting

it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office. He keeps

no staff; only one middle-aged man usually a little out at elbows,

who sits in a high Pew in the hall, and is rarely overburdened with

business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no clerks.

He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped. His

clients want _him_; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires to be

drawn, are drawn by special pleaders in the Temple on mysterious

instructions; fair copies that he requires to be made, are made at the

stationer's, expense being no consideration. The middle-aged man in

the Pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the Peerage, than any

crossing-sweeper in Holborn.

The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top,

the little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right, you to

the left. This train of indecision must surely be worked out now or

never. Now! Mr. Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts

on his hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the

middle-aged man out at elbows, "I shall be back presently." Very rarely

tells him any thing more explicit.

Mr. Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came--not quite so straight,

but nearly--to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. To Snagsby's, Law

Stationer's, Deeds engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in all

its branches, &c., &c., &c.

It is somewhere about five or six o'clock in the afternoon, and a balmy

fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook's Court. It hovers about Snagsby's

door. The hours are early there; dinner at half-past one, and supper at

half past nine. Mr Snagsby was about to descend into the subterranean

regions to take tea, when he looked out of his door just now, and saw

the crow who was out late.

"Master at home?"

Guster is minding the shop, for the 'Prentices take tea in the

kitchen, with Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby; consequently, the robe-maker's

two daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the two

second-floor windows of the opposite house are not driving the two

'Prentices to distraction, as they fondly suppose, but are merely

awakening the unprofitable admiration of Guster, whose hair won't grow

and never would, and, it is confidently thought, never will.

"Master at home?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.

Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears, glad

to get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and

veneration, as a storehouse of awful implements of the great torture of

the law: a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off.

Mr. Snagsby appears: greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. Bolts a bit

of bread and butter. Says, "Bless my soul, sir! Mr. Tulkinghorn!"

"I want half a word with you, Snagsby."

"Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn't you send your young man round

for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir!" Snagsby has brightened in

a moment.

The confined room, strong of parchment-grease is warehouse,

counting-house, and copying-office. Mr. Tulkinghorn sits, facing round,

on a stool at the desk.

"Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby."

"Yes, sir." Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas, and coughs behind his

hand, modestly anticipating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as a timid man, is

accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save words.

"You copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately."

"Yes sir, we did."

"There was one of them," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, carelessly

feeling--tight, unopenable oyster of the old school!--in the wrong

coat-pocket, "the handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather like.

As I happened to be passing, and thought I had it about me, I looked

in to ask you--but I haven't got it. No matter, any other time will

do--Ah! here it is!--I looked in to ask you who copied this?"

"Who copied this, sir?" says Mr. Snagsby, taking it, laying it flat on

the desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a

twist of the left hand peculiar to law-stationers. "We gave this out,

sir. We were giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that

time. I can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to my

book."

Mr. Snagsby takes his book down from the safe, makes another bolt of

the bit of bread and butter which seems to have stopped short, eyes the

affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger traveling down a page

of the book. "Jewby--Packer--Jarndyce."

"Jarndyce! Here we are, sir," says Mr. Snagsby. "To be sure! I might

have remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a writer who lodges

just over on the opposite side of the lane."

Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the law-stationer,

read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.

"_What_ do you call him? Nemo?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.

"Nemo, sir. Here it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday

night, at eight o'clock; brought in on the Thursday morning, at half

after nine."

"Nemo!" repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nemo is Latin for no one."

"It must be English for some one, sir, I think," Mr. Snagsby submits,

with his deferential cough. "It is a person's name. Here it is, you

see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out, Wednesday night, eight o'clock;

brought in, Thursday morning, half after nine."

The tail of Mr. Snagsby's eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs.

Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by deserting

his tea. Mr. Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs. Snagsby, as

who should say, "My dear, a customer!"

"Half after nine, sir," repeats Mr. Snagsby. "Our law-writers, who live

by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but it's

the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a written

advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the King's

Bench Office, and the Judges' Chambers, and so forth. You know the kind

of document, sir--wanting employ?"

Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of

Coavins's, the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine into Coavins's

windows. Coavins's coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of

several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr.

Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head, to glance

over his shoulder at his little woman, and to make apologetic motions

with his mouth to this effect: "Tul-king-horn--rich--in-flu-en-tial!"

"Have you given this man work before?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.

"O dear, yes, sir! Work of yours."

"Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he lived!"

"Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges at a--" Mr. Snagsby

makes another bolt, as if the bit of bread and butter were

insurmountable--"at a rag and bottle shop."

"Can you show me the place as I go back?"

"With the greatest pleasure, sir!"

Mr. Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his gray coat, pulls on his black

coat, takes his hat from its peg. "Oh! here is my little woman!" he

says aloud. "My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one of the lads to

look after the shop, while I step across the lane with Mr. Tulkinghorn?

Mrs. Snagsby, sir--I shan't be two minutes, my love!"

Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps at

them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office, refers

to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently curious.

"You will find that the place is rough, sir," says Mr. Snagsby,

walking deferentially in the road, and leaving the narrow pavement to

the lawyer; "and the party is very rough. But they're a wild lot in

general, sir. The advantage of this particular man is, that he never

wants sleep. He'll go it right on end, if you want him to, as long as

ever you like."

It is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full

effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters,

and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against

plaintiffs and defendants, and suitors of all sorts, and against the

general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed

a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest business of

life--diving through law and equity, and through that kindred mystery,

the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what, and collects about

us nobody knows whence or how: we only knowing in general that when

there is too much of it, we find it necessary to shovel it away--the

lawyer and the law-stationer come to a Rag and Bottle Shop, and general

emporium of much disregarded merchandise, lying and being in the shadow

of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is announced in paint to all

whom it may concern, by one Krook.

"This is where he lives, sir," says the law-stationer.

"This is where he lives, is it?" says the lawyer unconcernedly. "Thank

you."

"Are you not going in, sir?"

"No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good

evening. Thank you!" Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat, and returns to his

little woman and his tea.

But, Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes a

short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and enters

it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so in the

windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by a fire.

The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed candle in

his hand.

"Pray, is your lodger within?"

"Male or female, sir?" says Mr. Krook.

"Male. The person who does copying."

Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an

indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.

"Did you wish to see him, sir?"

"Yes."

"It's what I seldom do myself," says Mr. Krook with a grin. "Shall I

call him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!"

"I'll go up to him, then," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.

"Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!" Mr. Krook, with his

cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after

Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Hi--hi!" he says, when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly

disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat expands

her wicked mouth, and snarls at him.

"Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know what

they say of my lodger?" whispers Krook, going up a step or two.

"What do they say of him?"

"They say he has sold himself to the Enemy; but you and I know

better--he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so

black-humored and gloomy, that I believe he'd as soon make that bargain

as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!"

Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door

on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and

accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.

The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it, if

he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease,

and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as

if Poverty had griped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner, by

the chimney, stand a deal table and a broken desk: a wilderness marked

with a rain of ink. In another corner, a ragged old portmanteau on one

of the two chairs, serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger one is

needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The floor

is bare; except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies

perishing upon the hearth. No curtain vails the darkness of the night,

but the discolored shutters are drawn together; and through the two

gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in--the Banshee of

the man upon the bed.

For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork,

lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating

just within the doorway sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt

and trowsers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look, in the spectral

darkness of a candle that has guttered down, until the whole length

of its wick (still burning) has doubled over, and left a tower of

winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his whiskers

and his beard--the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the scum and

mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and

filthy as the air, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are

which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general sickliness

and faintness, and the odor of stale tobacco, there comes into the

lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.

"Hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick against

the door.

He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away, but

his eyes are surely open.

"Hallo, my friend!" he cries again. "Hallo! Hallo!"

As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long, goes

out, and leaves him in the dark; with the gaunt eyes in the shutters

staring down upon the bed.

THE GHOST-RAISER.

My Uncle Beagley, who commenced his commercial career very early in the

present century as a bagman, _will_ tell stories. Among them, he tells

his Single Ghost story so often, that I am heartily tired of it. In

self-defense, therefore, I publish the tale, in order that when next

the good, kind old gentleman offers to bore us with it, every body may

say they know it. I remember every word of it.

One fine autumn evening, about forty years ago, I was traveling on

horseback from Shrewsbury to Chester. I felt tolerably tired, and was

beginning to look out for some snug wayside inn, where I might pass

the night, when a sudden and violent thunder-storm came on. My horse,

terrified by the lightning, fairly took the bridle between his teeth,

and started off with me at full gallop through lanes and cross-roads,

until at length I managed to pull him up just near the door of a

neat-looking country inn.

"Well," thought I, "there was wit in your madness, old boy, since it

brought us to this comfortable refuge." And alighting, I gave him in

charge to the stout farmer's boy who acted as hostler. The inn-kitchen,

which was also the guest-room, was large, clean, neat, and comfortable,

very like the pleasant hostelry described by Izaak Walton. There were

several travelers already in the room--probably, like myself, driven

there for shelter--and they were all warming themselves by the blazing

fire while waiting for supper. I joined the party. Presently, being

summoned by the hostess, we all sat down, twelve in number, to a

smoking repast of bacon and eggs, corned beef and carrots, and stewed

hare.

The conversation naturally turned on the mishaps occasioned by the

storm, of which every one seemed to have had his full share. One

had been thrown off his horse; another, driving in a gig, had been

upset into a muddy dyke; all had got a thorough wetting, and agreed

unanimously that it was dreadful weather--a regular witches' sabbath!

"Witches and ghosts prefer for their sabbath a fine moonlight night to

such weather as this!"

These words were uttered in a solemn tone, and with strange emphasis,

by one of the company. He was a tall, dark-looking man, and I had set

him down in my own mind as a traveling merchant or peddler. My next

neighbor was a gay, well-looking, fashionably-dressed young man, who,

bursting into a peal of laughter, said:

"You must know the manners and customs of ghosts very well, to be able

to tell that they dislike getting wet or muddy."

The first speaker, giving him a dark fierce look, said:

"Young man, speak not so lightly of things above your comprehension."

"Do you mean to imply that there are such things as ghosts?"

"Perhaps there are, if you had courage to look at them."

The young man stood up, flushed with anger. But presently resuming his

seat, he said, calmly:

"That taunt should cost you dear, if it were not such a foolish one."

"A foolish one!" exclaimed the merchant, throwing on the table a heavy

leathern purse. "There are fifty guineas. I am content to lose them,

if, before the hour is ended, I do not succeed in showing you, who

are so obstinately prejudiced, the form of any one of your deceased

friends; and if, after you have recognized him, you allow him to kiss

your lips."

We all looked at each other, but my young neighbor, still in the same

mocking manner, replied:

"You will do that, will you?"

"Yes," said the other--"I will stake these fifty guineas, on condition

that you will pay a similar sum if you lose."

After a short silence, the young man said, gayly:

"Fifty guineas, my worthy sorcerer, are more than a poor college sizar

ever possessed; but here are five, which, if you are satisfied, I shall

be most willing to wager."

The other took up his purse, saying, in a contemptuous tone:

"Young gentleman, you wish to draw back?"

"_I_ draw back!" exclaimed the student.--"Well! if I had the fifty

guineas, you should see whether I wish to draw back!"

"Here," said I, "are four guineas, which I will stake on your wager."

No sooner had I made this proposition than the rest of the company,

attracted by the singularity of the affair, came forward to lay down

their money; and in a minute or two the fifty guineas were subscribed.

The merchant appeared so sure of winning, that he placed all the stakes

in the student's hands, and prepared for his experiment. We selected

for the purpose a small summer-house in the garden, perfectly isolated,

and having no means of exit but a window and a door, which we carefully

fastened, after placing the young man within. We put writing materials

on a small table in the summer-house, and took away the candles. We

remained outside, with the peddler among us. In a low solemn voice he

began to chant the following lines:

"What riseth slow from the ocean caves

And the stormy surf?

The phantom pale sets his blackened foot

On the fresh green turf."

Then, raising his voice solemnly, he said:

"You asked to see your friend, Francis Villiers, who was drowned, three

years ago, off the coast of South America--what do you see?"

"I see," replied the student, "a white light arising near the window;

but it has no form; it is like an uncertain cloud."

We--the spectators--remained profoundly silent.

"Are you afraid?" asked the merchant, in a loud voice.

"I am not," replied the student, firmly.

After a moment's silence, the peddler stamped three times on the

ground, and sang:

"And the phantom white, whose clay-cold face

Was once so fair,

Dries with his shroud his clinging vest

And his sea-tossed hair."

Once more the solemn question:

"You, who would see revealed the mysteries of the tomb--what do you see

now?"

The student answered, in a calm voice, but like that of a man

describing things as they pass before him:

"I see the cloud taking the form of a phantom; its head is covered with

a long vail--it stands still."

"Are you afraid?"

"I am not."

We looked at each other in horror-stricken silence, while the merchant,

raising his arms above his head, chanted, in a sepulchral voice:

"And the phantom said, as he rose from the wave,

He shall know me in sooth!

I will go to my friend, gay, smiling, and fond,

As in our first youth!"

"What do you see?" said he.

"I see the phantom advance; he lifts his vail--'tis Francis

Villiers!--he approaches the table--he writes!--'tis his signature!"

"Are you afraid?"

A fearful moment of silence ensued; then the student replied, but in an

altered voice:

"I am not."

With strange and frantic gestures, the merchant then sang:

"And the phantom said to the mocking seer,

I come from the South;

Put thy hand on my hand--thy heart on my heart--

Thy mouth on my mouth!"

"What do you see?"

"He comes--he approaches--he pursues me--he is stretching out his

arms--he will have me! Help! help! Save me!"

"Are you afraid _now_?" asked the merchant, in a mocking voice.

A piercing cry, and then a stifled groan, were the only reply to this

terrible question.

"Help that rash youth!" said the merchant, bitterly. "I have, I think,

won the wager; but it is sufficient for me to have given him a lesson.

Let him keep his money, and be wiser for the future."

He walked rapidly away. We opened the door of the summer-house, and

found the student in convulsions. A paper, signed with the name

"Francis Villiers," was on the table. As soon as the student's senses

were restored, he asked vehemently where was the vile sorcerer who had

subjected him to such a horrible ordeal--he would kill him! He sought

him throughout the inn in vain; then, with the speed of a madman, he

dashed off across the fields in pursuit of him--and we never saw either

of them again. That, children, is my Ghost Story!

"And how is it, uncle, that after _that_, you don't believe in ghosts?"

said I, the first time I heard it.

"Because, my boy," replied my uncle, "neither the student nor the

merchant ever returned; and the forty-five guineas, belonging to me and

the other travelers, continued equally invisible. Those two swindlers

carried them off, after having acted a farce, which we, like ninnies,

believed to be real."

THE THREE VISITORS OF BERNARDIN DE SAINT PIERRE.

One morning while Bernardin de Saint Pierre was admiring, through one

of the windows of his apartment, the glowing radiance of the rising

sun, and thinking, perhaps, of transferring its bright tints, and the

fragrance of early dawn, and the glittering dew-drops, to the pages of

his _Harmonies de la Nature_, a stranger entered with noiseless step;

he saluted the poet with deep reverence, respectfully apologizing for

so early an intrusion, and it was not until after repeated invitations

that he was prevailed upon to take a seat beside him. The young man's

face bore the dark olive hue of the southern sun, his black hair fell

in waves from his temples, over the collar of his military coat. His

look was at once pensive and modest, yet proud. The fashion of his

dress, his high boots, the white and fringed gloves, proclaimed him

an officer of the French Republic, whom the close of the campaign in

Italy had allowed to return home. And such indeed he was, as he took

care to inform Bernardin, when his excitement at finding himself in the

presence of the celebrated author had a little subsided.

"I congratulate you, sir," said Saint Pierre, "on having served under

the great captain, who has so gloriously terminated this campaign. I

can enter into such triumphs, for I, too, have been a soldier."

"Would that I were one no longer," exclaimed the young officer--"that

I had never been one. War is hateful to me! I know neither enmity

nor ambition--the conqueror and the conquered are alike to me. This

soft, lovely, morning, with its dewy freshness, passed in tranquil

conversation or lonely musings, has more charms for me than all

the pomp and circumstance of war. Then, what an avenue to fame! by

slaughter!--butchery! Laurels have been strewn in my path. I see

nothing but the blood through which I have been wading."

The poet extended his hand to the young soldier, who respectfully

kissed it. "Yours," he said, "is true glory. The names of Paul and

Virginia will live forever in the memories and heads of men. Ah, sir!

this is the brightest day of my life. I asked of fortune only that

I might live to see you, to tell you as man, the delightful hours my

youth owed to you, and now my bright hope is realized. Behold the

treasure of my boyhood, the delight of my manhood, my companion in the

college--on the fields of Montenotte and Lodi"--and the stranger took

from his pocket a well-worn copy of _Paul and Virginia_, the leaves

kept together only by a few threads.

With all Saint Pierre's modesty, he could not but be deeply moved by

the enthusiasm of the young officer. At a time like this, when war was

raging both at home and abroad, it was rather unusual to find a soldier

warmly interested in an Indian idyl, and busying himself about a poet,

in his obscure retreat on the banks of a pretty stream.

"I am delighted," he said, "not so much with your too indulgent

estimate of an ephemeral book, but with the sympathy between us--that

bond of common love for mankind and for nature, a love of whose

inspirations my book is but a feeble utterance of. It is only in some

such obscure corner as this, that we dare now own that we love God and

Heaven, the dewy morning and peace on earth. Discord still reigns at

Paris. Is it not so?"

The young officer looked up with a sad expression in his dark eyes.

"Alas, yes! it is reigning more furiously than ever; but it is too

painful a subject; let us change it. Are you at present engaged in any

work? and are these its first sheets?"

Bernardin smiled as he answered--"They are old memorials to the

Directory at Paris. I was once the secretary, the literary man of the

revolutionary club of Essoune, the republicans of that town having more

warmth of patriotism than power of style, employed me to draw up their

memorials, and I escaped the guillotine by accepting the office."

"The author of _Paul and Virginia_ secretary to a village revolutionary

club!"

"Neither more nor less. It was not very poetical; but so it was.

However, during that time I have had some hours of leisure which I

have devoted to a work that has been the dream of my life, and the

thought of which has cheered me, in the forests of Sweden, and under

the burning skies of the Isle of France. My object is to reveal the

divine intelligence to the human race, through the universal relation

between all beings. From physical order I elicit physical good; from

the good, the moral, and from the moral, God. And the title of the

book is to be the _Harmonies of Nature_. I was working at it when you

came in, and meditating on the wise providence which, while giving to

different beings different organs, has supplied the apparent inequality

by special qualities and counterbalancing advantages. I intend also to

treat of the harmonies of the stars. Oh! how beautiful are our nights

in France!"

"And I, too, thought so, till I had seen the nights in Italy,"

exclaimed the young stranger. "There every star is a living token of

friendship or of love. Two friends parted by long exile each pledge

themselves to look at the same star at the same hour, and the light

thus shared is a link between them. The young girl gives to the bright

stars of the summer nights her own name and that of her lover, till

the whole firmament is full of Bettinas and Ciprianas, Francescas and

Giottos. Should one of these tender links be severed by death, the

still remaining one is comforted in her sorrow by seeing the bright

memorial of her beloved still shining on the borders of that heavenly

horizon, where their meeting will be forever."

"This is indeed a tender harmony. Yes, love is every where. But,"

continued Bernardin, delighted at being understood; "but tell me, do

you yourself write? With mental energies such as yours, why should you

not cast upon the troubled waters of this age some thought that may yet

be the fructifying seed to be found after many days. All soldiers write

well."

"I do write a little, sir," and the young officer blushed as he

answered; "since your kind encouragement has anticipated my request,

and thus emboldened me to make it, I venture to ask you to cast your

eye over a few pages written to beguile the hours of a lonely midnight

watch. You will remember it is the book of a soldier, and one almost a

foreigner."

"I thank you for the confidence reposed in me," said Saint Pierre, "and

I am persuaded the friend will have no need to bias the judge in the

impartial opinion that you have a right to claim from me."

The young officer now rose, and with a request to be allowed to repeat

his visit, and a cordial, though respectful pressure of Saint Pierre's

hand, took his leave, and long after the garden-gate had closed

behind him, Bernardin stood watching the cloud of dust in which had

disappeared his young visitor, and the steed on which he galloped back

to Paris.

"So, then," thought the philosopher, as he re-entered his cottage,

"there still exist some few minds free from the consuming toils of

ambition. Who would ever have expected to find a lover of nature

with a republican epaulet? There is a simplicity in this youth most

attractive; how modestly did he speak of himself; how bitterly lament

the horrors of war; and his enjoyment of this lovely, dewy morning,

was that of a sage no less than of a poet. Doubtless the manuscript is

some learned treatise on the art of war--the subject not his choice but

the necessity of his position. The art of war!--art indeed--the art of

killing the arts!"

Bernardin de Saint Pierre was mistaken. The manuscript was a pastoral

romance--conceive his delight--A Pastoral Romance! "Yes!" he said, "the

noble mind must let fly the falcon imagination to cater for it. It can

not feed on the garbage around."

Day after day now elapsed without bringing his young visitor; but some

months after, Bernardin, seated at a table placed under the shade of

trees of his own planting, and covered with flowers gathered to serve

as models for his word-paintings, was enjoying the soft evening breeze,

when the visit of an officer was announced; and to his great surprise,

instead of him whom he was eagerly advancing to welcome, he beheld a

stranger. He had, indeed, the same black hair falling from his temples,

the same dark eyes, the same olive hue of the man of the sun and the

Mediterranean. But he saw not the same person; his new visitor was at

least ten years older than the first.

"I am the elder brother, sir, of an officer who, some months since, did

himself the honor of calling upon you."

"His visit still lives in my memory as one most pleasant. He confided

to me a manuscript which I would be glad to take this opportunity of

returning, with my assurances of entire sympathy in his love of nature,

and still more in his noble indignation against tyrants, his eloquent

invectives against ambition. Tell him, too, from me, how much I admire

his style; its rich imagery--its--"

"I must not let you go on, sir, for such praise has already rendered it

difficult to avow myself the author of the book. I had not courage to

submit it to you myself, but my younger and more adventurous brother

gladly availed himself of it as a plea for his intrusion."

After some courteous words interchanged between the new visitor and

Bernardin, the latter pointed to the flowers and said, "I was at that

moment thinking of your brother; he had told me of the names given

by loving hearts in Italy to the stars, and I was reflecting that

our associations with flowers were still trammeled by such a rugged

nomenclature; it is enough to make the science of botany detestable."

"Ah, sir, you will teach all to love it; already has your _Etudes de la

Nature_ made it popular throughout Europe. I myself had formed a floral

dial at a villa at Florence where my regiment was quartered; every hour

of the night and of the day was marked by the opening of different

flowers. I am passionately fond of them, and can well understand the

Dutchman lavishing a fortune upon a tulip, and spending a life in

giving it some new variety of tint."

"What a simple-minded family!" thought Bernardin. "One brother

worships the starry splendor of the heavens, and the other luxuriates

in flowers, and spends his idle garrison hours in watching them as

they bud forth at every hour of the day; and these two young men are

soldiers! War has not hardened their hearts, nor conquest made them

despise simple pleasures." And now, Saint Pierre, leaning on his new

friend, proceeded to show him his flowers, "which," he said, "though

not like the lovely products of the fertile Italy you have conquered,

yet, as my own planting are not without their fragrance for the old

man;" and as they walked along, he repeated to himself rather than to

his companion,

"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas

Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum

Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari"

And in as low a voice, the officer went on--"Yes! happy the wise man

who penetrates the arcana of nature, and who tramples under foot the

world's prejudices." And as he stooped to pluck a daisy, he added,

"who the calm votary of the silvan deities beholds with unenvious eye

the consular pomp and the glittering diadem. Ah, sir! you, too, like

Virgil--do you know he is my poet of all poets?" And before they had

gone the round of the garden, the sage and the soldier had repeated

almost the whole of the second book of the Georgics; and now, having

begged and obtained a flower as a memento of his visit, the officer

took his leave, with the promise of soon returning and bringing with

him his brother.

"If all republicans," said Bernardin, "were like these two brothers,

the republic would be heaven, and I need not so long to die."

And with fresh impulse, and an interest increased by the sympathy

of his visitor in his love of flowers, Saint Pierre turned to his

labors. The second part of his _Harmonies de la Nature_ was finished,

and he was now engaged upon the last division of his great work--"The

Harmonies of Human Nature," when one day a knock at the door of his

library made him raise his head to see, as he believed, the face of

one of his two friends in the Italian army, though whether the elder

or the younger he could not at once distinguish. On nearer survey, he

discovered, to his great perplexity, that neither the one nor the other

stood before him. The uniform of this third officer was exactly the

same, he had the same masses of black hair, the same eyes, but though a

little older than the first, and younger than the second of his former

visitors, he seemed to bear more traces than either of the struggle

and the vigil; and his brow was graver and more thoughtful. Still

the triple resemblance was most striking, and for a moment Bernardin

scarcely knew whether he was to greet him as a stranger; but before he

could speak, the visitor introduced himself as the brother of the two

officers, the kindness of whose reception had encouraged him to pay his

respects to the friend of Jean Jacques Rousseau, to the illustrious

author of the _Etudes de la Nature_, and to venture to offer the

admiring homage of a blunt soldier.

Was it those lips with their Attic cut, and firm grace, which smile and

threat seemed alike to become, or was it the deep voice, the piercing

eagle glance, or his already high reputation as the greatest captain of

the age, that riveted the attention of the philosopher upon this last

of the three brothers, and indelibly impressed upon his memory every

word of the conversation which now ensued?

But this third brother and the poet spoke not of scenery, nor stars,

nor sun, nor streams, nor flowers. They spoke of human nature, of the

universal brotherhood of mankind, of philosophy, and patriotism. They

spoke, too, of the present evil days--the old man with some little

bitterness and much indulgence, the young man with hopes aspiring

and daring as his conquests; and while laying open future prospects

with almost prophetic clearness, he showed the certain and impending

destruction of all parties by each other, and the consequent and near

approach of peace.

"God grant it;" cried Bernardin de Saint Pierre.

"God grants all to the firm will and the determined purpose," was the

answer.

Some expressive pauses made breaks in a conversation which was less an

interchange of words than of thoughts. Vainly did Bernardin several

times attempt to introduce the subject of the campaigns in Italy, as

an opening for some complimentary tribute to the courage, the presence

of mind, the clear mental vision, the resolute powers of action, of

his visitor; the latter as constantly evaded the subject, for with all

the exquisite tact which was his great characteristic through life,

he guessed the philosopher could accord but a reluctant homage to any

triumph of the sword, even when not drawn in the service of ambition.

He felt, too, that the warrior should be like a fortress, from whose

strong, silent walls, is heard only in time of war the booming of its

artillery.

Thus, therefore, ran the dialogue:

"Italy is on fire with your name."

"I have founded chairs of philosophy, of history, and oratory, in most

of the conquered cities."

"Montenotte will ever be one of the most glorious monuments of French

valor."

"I have pensioned all the _savants_ of Bologna, Florence, and Milan."

"You have rivaled the renown of the immortal generals of antiquity."

"Whenever a city was taken, my first care was to command public

monuments and private property to be respected, and to prohibit under

pain of death all outrage to women, and before I allowed guards to be

planted at my own door, I took care sentinels were at the gates of

every church and hospital."

"How you must have longed for repose, were it only to indulge the

bright dreams of the future."

"The actual and the real for me. I like best to shut myself up in my

quarters to pursue my favorite studies of mathematics and history."

Struck with enthusiastic admiration of such simplicity, and such wise

moderation, Bernardin ceased any longer to pay forced compliments to

the military prowess with which he had no sympathy, and now poured

out his whole heart in homage to his noble qualities as a legislator

and as a man. Could he do less than read to him some few pages of his

"Harmonies"--the winding-up of his "Harmonies of Nature." To one of

the three brothers, worthy to comprehend the sublimity of the science

of Heaven, he had shown the stars; to another, tender as Rousseau, the

flowers; and now the graver pages of his book to a third--graver, wiser

than either--as wise as Marcus Aurelius; "nay, wiser," said Bernardin,

"for I am sure he never would consent to be made emperor."

And now, who were these three officers of the Italian army?

The first officer, who wooed the stars and the dewy morning, and who

had no ambition, was Louis Bonaparte, afterward King of Holland.

The second officer, who delighted in flowers, and in floral dials, was

Joseph Bonaparte, afterward King of the two Spains and of the Indies.

The third officer--the brother of the two others--who was a republican,

a philosopher, a philanthropist, a lover of peace, and who had no

ambition, was Napoleon Bonaparte, afterward Emperor of the French, and

King of Italy!

What an eclogue for Bernardin de Saint Pierre--Two Kings and an Emperor!

A PRIMITIVE PEOPLE.

The history of Transylvania is, perhaps, one of the wildest and most

romantic that ever told the story of a nation. It describes a people

perfectly primitive and pastoral, and living under institutions

as patriarchal as those existing at the time of Lot or Abraham.

Transylvania, long annexed to the Austrian monarchy, was in old times

looked upon as the rightful prize of the strong hand; and was, by

turns, seized and plundered by Turks, Austrians, and Hungarians. For

a short time it chose its own princes, who aspired to be kings of

Hungary. Their presumption met with the penalty of utter annihilation.

To understand these peasants properly, the reader may, perhaps, be

allowed to compare them to the Highland clansmen of Scotland at the

same period. Far before any authentic records, a people have dwelt in

Transylvania, who knew nothing beyond the deep valleys in which they

lived; they held no intercourse with the rest of the world, or even

with their neighbors, the other inhabitants of the country; and they

formed as many little separate republics as there were valleys. Each

clan had, and even still has, its chief, who generally fills, also,

the functions of judge and priest. In the morning and the evening they

have public prayers; but, although like their lords, they belong to

the reformed religion, they have no one among them specially intrusted

with the cure of souls. When they marry their daughters, they make

great ceremony and feasting, to which all comers are welcome. On these

occasions, too, they sometimes pay a visit to the lord of the valley,

that he may share in their simple rejoicing; but, at other times, they

are shy of strangers, and few of them wander far beyond their native

place. The agent, or the lord himself, usually visits them once a

year; or, perhaps, more frequently the patriarch of the tribe goes

to the lord and tells him of the number of his cattle, and of their

increase, of what must be sold and what must be kept. Certain of the

peasants leave the depths of their valley toward the end of summer,

and drive their flocks and herds into Wallachia, along the banks of

the mighty Danube. Here are found immense forests; and here, in spite

of winter, the sheep may glean fresh and plentiful pasturage. The

owners of the woods are paid, in return, a certain sum yearly. In the

spring, merchants and cattle-dealers come down from Constantinople, who

buy their sheep and goats; and it is to this sale that the lords of

Transylvania look for the greatest part of their incomes.

Immediately after the shepherds have effected a sale, they dispatch

a messenger to their lord who, in his turn, sends a trusty servant

to receive the money. There are no bankers, no bills, no checks, no

first and second of exchange, no post-office orders; the purchases are

paid for in solid and very dirty silver, and it is carried through

floods, rain, wind, and weather, to the lord with pastoral honesty and

simplicity. All takes place with a good faith and punctuality, and an

earnestness of purpose very touching to witness.

Besides this source of revenue, no sooner have the flocks and herds

returned to the valley, than the lord sends in wagons to return laden

with cheese, the produce of the year. These cheeses are some of them

formed like loaves; and some, the most delicate, are pressed into

the skins of young lambs, carefully prepared for the purpose by some

primitive art. The third, and remaining portion, of a Transylvanian

gentleman's income is derived from wool, which is as faithfully and

punctually delivered to him as his cheeses, or the cash for his flocks.

There is neither corn nor wine in these valleys, and the dwellers in

them live chiefly on a kind of thin paste and a fermented drink, in

both of which the milk of sheep forms a very important ingredient.

Sometimes they regale themselves with a lamb or a kid; but this is a

rare festival. They make their own garments from the wool of their

flocks, which they fashion into coarse thick cloths, mighty against

snow, and rain, and sun, and wind, but not pretty. Their caps, too, are

made of wool; and, with long, shaggy tufts hanging to them, look like

weird, uncouth wigs. Their women and children are clothed in the same

way, and all live together in caves cut in the mountain side, or formed

by nature in the solid rocks.

I paid some of these people a visit, and found, in one of these cavern

houses, an Englishman's hat and umbrella. These things interested me,

because their possessors had a legend that they had been received

from a demon, and I could not help fancying it more likely that they

had belonged to some luckless wight, who might have wandered thither

and been lost. Into the hat they had forced a cheese; but I fancied I

detected a sort of superstitious reverence for the umbrella, and they

evidently looked upon its mechanism with great wonder and respect.

They asked eagerly for information upon the mysterious subject, and,

after I had explained it (which I am now almost sorry I did), I fancy

they looked upon me as we, in England, looked upon people who had a

tendency for explaining things in the middle ages--as an unbeliever, a

student in dark arts, a magician, in league with the Evil One. But I

had an object to answer, and I entered into negotiations for getting

the cheese out of the hat, and offered, what Mr. Trapbois calls a

"con-si-de-ra-tion," to be allowed to examine both hat and umbrella

nearer, to see if I could find any mark or initials, giving a clew

to their former owner. For a long time my efforts were useless; the

cheese in the hat was intended for the lord, and they were afraid of

offending the umbrella by allowing me to take any liberty with it; but

a good-temper, and a cheery way, gets on wonderfully with simple folk,

and at length they listened to my wish, but refused my gift. I could

not, however, find any thing to reward my search.

On returning to Vienna the mystery was cleared up. It appears, that

an English traveler making a tour in those parts on foot, had been

overtaken by a gaunt man in a strange costume. The uncouth figure

addressed him in an unknown tongue; and all presence of mind, for a

moment, deserted him. Without pausing to reflect if the greeting were

friendly or hostile, he thought to conciliate his gigantic acquaintance

(having no money about him) by offering the only things he could

dispose of; so, taking off his hat, and resigning his umbrella with it

into the hands stretched out in wonder to receive them, the English

traveler took to his heels.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE BARDI.

A TRUE OLD TALE.

The Via Dei Bardi is one of the most ancient streets of Florence. Long,

dark, and narrow, it reaches from the extremity of the Ponte Rubaconte

to the right of the Ponte Vecchio. Its old houses look decayed and

squalid now; but in former days they were magnificent and orderly, full

of all the state of those times, being the residences of many of the

Florentine nobility. How many struggles of faction, how many scenes

of civil war, have these old houses witnessed! for in the period of

their splendor, Florence was torn by intestine feuds; from generation

to generation, Guelfs and Ghibelines, Bianchi, and Neri, handed down

their bitter quarrels, private and personal animosity mingling with

public or party spirit, and ending in many a dark and violent deed.

These combatants are all sleeping now: the patriot, the banished

citizen, the timid, the cruel--all, all are gone, and have left us

only tales to read, or lessons to learn if we can but use them. But we

are not skilled to teach a lesson; we would rather tell a legend of

those times, recalled to mind, especially at present, because it has

been chosen as the subject of a fine picture recently finished by a

Florentine artist, Benedetto Servolini.

In the Via dei Bardi stood, probably still stands, the house inhabited

by the chief of the great and noble family from whom it takes its

name--we write of the period of the fiercest struggles between the

Guelfs and Ghibelines; and the Bardi were powerful partisans of the

latter party. In that house dwelt a young girl of uncommon beauty,

and yet more uncommon character. An old writer thus describes her:

"To look on her was enchantment; her eyes called you to love her; her

smile was like heaven; if you heard her speak, you were conquered. Her

whole person was a miracle of beauty, and her deportment had a certain

maidenly pride, springing from a pure heart and conscious integrity."

From the troubled scenes she had witnessed, her mind had acquired

composure and courage unusual with her sex, and it was of that high

stamp that is prone to admire with enthusiasm all generous and

self-devoting deeds. Such a being, however apt to inspire love, was not

likely to be easily won; accordingly, the crowd of lovers who at first

surrounded Dianora gradually dropped off, for they gained no favor.

All were received with the same bright and beautiful smile, and a gay,

charming grace, which flattered no man's vanity; so they carried their

homage to other shrines where it might be more prized, though by an

inferior idol. And what felt Dianora when her votaries left her? We are

not told; but not long after, you might see, if you walked along the

street of the Bardi toward evening, a beautiful woman siting near a

balcony: a frame of embroidery is before her; but her eyes are oftener

turned to the street than to the lilies she is working. It is Dianora.

But surely it is not idle curiosity that bends her noble brow so often

this way, and beams in her bright, speaking eyes, and sweet, kind

smile. On whom is it turned, and why does her cheek flush so quickly?

A youth of graceful and manly appearance is passing her window; his

name is Hyppolito: he has long cherished the image of Dianora as

Dante did that of his Beatrice. In loving her, he loved more ardently

every thing that is good and noble in the world; he shunned folly and

idleness, and strove to make himself worthy of what he believed Dianora

to be. At length, one of Cupid's emissaries--whether nurse or friend

the chronicle does not tell--aided Hyppolito in meeting Dianora. One

meeting succeeded another, till she gave him her heart, as such a true,

young heart is given, with entire confidence, and a strength of feeling

peculiar to herself. But what could they hope? Hyppolito's family were

of the opposite party, and they knew it was vain to expect from them

even a patient hearing; nor were the Bardi behind in proper feelings

of hatred. What was to be done? There was but one Dianora--but one

Hyppolito in the world; so have many wise young people thought of each

other both before and since the days of the Ghibelines; but these two

might be excused for thinking so, for many who saw them were of the

same opinion. To part--what was the world to them if they were parted?

Their station, their years, their tastes--so removed from noisy and

frivolous pleasures--their virtuous characters, seemed to point out

that they were born for each other. What divided them? One only point

the adverse political feelings of their families. Shall they sacrifice

themselves to these? No. Thus reasoned Hyppolito; but we think the

chronicles exaggerate the virtues of Dianora's character; for how many

a girl unchronicled by fame has, before the still tribunal of her own

sense of duty to God and her parents, sacrificed her dearest hopes

rather than offend them; and this, with all her heroism, Dianora did

not, but gave up all these dear early claims for her new love.

Delays were needless, for time could do nothing to smooth their path;

so it was determined that Hyppolito should bring a ladder to Dianora's

window, and, aided by their friend, they should find their way to

a priest prepared to give them his blessing. The night appointed

came--still and beautiful as heart could wish; the stars sparkling in

the deep blue sky, bright as they may now be seen in that fair clime.

Hyppolito has reached the house; he has fixed the ladder of ropes;

there is no moon to betray him; in a minute, his light step will have

reached the balcony. But there is a noise in the street, and lights

approaching; the night-guard is passing; they have seen the ladder, for

the street is narrow. Hyppolito is down, and tries to escape--in vain.

They seize and drag him to prison. What was he doing there? What can he

reply? That he meant to enter the house, to carry something from it, or

commit some bad deed, can not be denied. He will not betray Dianora; it

would only be to separate them forever, and leave her with a stained

name. He yields to his fate; the proofs are irresistible, and, by the

severe law of Florence at that period, Hyppolito must die. All Florence

is in amazement. So estimable a youth, to all outward appearance, to be

in reality addicted to the basest crimes! Who could have believed it?

But he confesses; there is no room for doubt. Pardon is implored by his

afflicted friends; but no pardon can be granted for so flagrant a crime.

Hyppolito had one consolation--his father never doubted him; if he had,

one glance of his son's clear, though sad eye, and candid, open brow,

would have reassured him. He saw there was a mystery, but he was sure

it involved no guilt on Hyppolito's part. Hyppolito also believed that

his good name would one day be cleared, and that his noble Dianora

would in due time remove the stain that clouded it. He consented to

die, rather than live separated from her. Yet poor Hyppolito was sorry

to leave the world so young; and sadly, though calmly, he arranged his

small possessions, for the benefit of those he loved, and of the poor,

to whom he had always been a friend.