"Not so, not so," said Taddeo, kissing the ring. "To us it cannot but be

a precious treasure."

Perhaps while he acted thus, Taddeo thought not only of his friend, but

of the woman who had preserved him from death.

Taddeo left.

Fifteen days after his reaching home, all Sorrento put on its holiday

attire. The church of the town, splendidly decorated, the lighted

torches, the people in their gala dresses, all announced that some

remarkable event was about to take place in the village. The bells rung

loud peals, and young girls dressed in white, with flowers in their

hands, stood on the church portico. Certainly a great event was about to

take place. The _White Rose of Sorrento_ was about to be married to a

French nobleman of high rank, _Henri Marquis de Maulear_.

About noon there was a rumor among the crowd in front of the church that

the bridal party were near. All hurried to meet them, and Aminta was

seen leaning on her brother's arm, while the Marquis escorted Signora

Rovero.

The appearance of the beautiful young girl, whiter than her veil, paler

than the flowers which adorned her brow, produced a general sensation of

admiration. Mingled with this, however, was a kind of sadness, when the

melancholy on her brow was observed. The Marquis seemed also to be ill

at ease, and to suffer under the influence of feelings which on such a

day were strange indeed. All care, all anxiety should be lost in the

intoxication of love. Maulear had purchased his happiness by an error,

and this oppressed him. After the noble decision of Aminta, and the

preference she had so heroically expressed at the time of his purposed

duel with Monte-Leone, Maulear had not dared to mention the letter of

his father. He had simply told Signora Rovero, that he was master of his

own actions, and sure of his father's consent and approbation to the

marriage he was about to contract. The Signora, who was credulous, was

confident that a brilliant match was secured for Aminta, and suffered

herself to be easily persuaded. Maulear, too, became daily more

infatuated; and, listening to passion alone, had informed his father,

not that he was about to marry, but that when the letter reached him he

would be married. Yet when he had sent the letter, and the time was

come, all his fears were aroused, and he shuddered at the apprehension

of the consequences of what he was about to do. In this state of mind he

went to the altar, and nothing but the beauty of his bride and the

solemnity of the ceremony could efface the sombre clouds which obscured

his brow. The priest blessed the pair, and a few minutes after the young

Marquis of Maulear, with his beautiful _Marquise_, left the village.

Just when the venerable village priest, in God's name, placed Aminta's

hand in Henri's, the terrible cry we have already heard twice echoed

through the arches of the church, and a man was seen to rush towards the

sea. The shout, though it filled the church, was uttered in the portico,

and had not interrupted the service. Thenceforth _Scorpione_ was never

seen at Sorrento.

FOOTNOTES:

[N] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer

& Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United

States for the Southern District of New York.

[O] _Anglice._ Good day, my dear Pignana.

[P] The original of this sentence is _Je vais vous donner la liste ...

c'est a dire le compte de_ NOS HOMMES ... _non de_ NOS SOMMES, _etc.,

etc._ It is scarcely probably that MONTE-LEONE and Pignana, speaking

Italian, indulged in French _jeux des mots_.

THE ABBE DE VOISENON AND HIS TIMES.

From Frazer's Magazine

The province of Brie, in France, divided and subdivided since the

Revolution of 1789, into departments, arondissements, and cantons, is

filled with chateaux, which, in the reign of Louis XV., were inhabited

by those gold-be-spangled marquises, those idle, godless abbes, and

those obese financiers, whom the secret memoirs of Grimm and Bachaumont,

and the letters of the Marquis de Lauraguais, have held up to such

unsparing ridicule and contempt. This milky and cheese-producing Brie,

this inexhaustible Io, was, at the epoch of the regent Orleans and his

deplorable successor, a literal cavern of pleasures, in the most impure

acceptation of the term; every chateau which the Black Band has not

demolished is, as it were, a half-volume of memoirs in which may be read

the entire history of the times. Here is the spot where formerly stood

the chateau of Samuel Bernard, the prodigal, it is true, of an anterior

age, but worthy of the succeeding one; there is the pavilion of Bourei,

another financier, another Jupiter of all the Danaes of the Theatre

Italien: on this side we see Vaux, the residence of that most princely

of finance ministers, whose suddenly acquired power and wealth, and as

sudden downfall, may surely point a moral for all ministers present and

to come; on that side we have the chateau of Law, the trigonometrical

thief; and Brunoy, the residence of the greatest eccentric perhaps in

the annals of French history: in a word, wherever the foot is placed,

there arises a sort of lamentation of the eighteenth century--that

celebrated century, whose limits we do not pretend to circumscribe as

the astronomers would, but whose beginning may be dated from the decline

of the reign of Louis XIV., its career closing with Barras, whose

immodest chateau still displays at the present day its restored

foundations on the soil upon which Vaux, Brunoy, and Voisenon, shone so

fatally.

It was in this last named little chateau that was born and educated the

celebrated abbe, the friend of Voltaire, of Madame Favart, and of the

Duc de la Valliere; and here it was, also, that in manhood its possessor

would occasionally resort, though not the least in the world a man who

could appreciate rural enjoyments, for the purpose of reposing from the

fatigues of some of his epicurean pilgrimages to his friends at Paris or

Montrouge, and which was his final sojourn when age and infirmities

rendered it imperatively necessary for him to breathe the pure air of

his native place, far away from the heating _petits soupers_ of the

capital, and the various other dearly cherished scenes of his earlier

years.

Claude Henri Fusee de Voisenon, Abbe of Jard, and Minister

Plenipotentiary of the Prince-Bishop of Spire, was born at Voisenon on

the 8th of June, 1708. Biographers have, perhaps, laid too much stress

on the debility of constitution which he brought with him into the

world, inherited, they say, from his mother, an exceedingly delicate

woman. Since the examples of longevity given by Fontenelle and Voltaire,

of whom the first lived to the use of a hundred, and the second to

upwards of four-score years, and yet both of whom came into the world

with very doubtful chances of existence, it is become a very hazardous

task to determine, or even to foretell, length of days by the state of

health at birth. They add, that an unhealthy nurse, aggravating the

hereditary weakness of the child, infused with her milk into his blood

the germs of that asthma from which he suffered all his life, and of

which he eventually died. These facts accepted--a delicate mother, an

unhealthy nurse, an asthma, and constant spittings of blood--it follows

that, even with these serious disadvantages to contend with, a man may

live and even enjoy life up to the age of sixty-eight. How many healthy

men there are who would be content to attain this age! And if the Abbe

de Voisenon did not exceed the bounds of an age of very fair

proportions, we must bear in mind that, though even an invalid, he

constantly trifled with his health with the imprudence of a man of

vigorous constitution; eating beyond measure, drinking freely, presiding

at all the _petits soupers_--_petit_ only in name--of the capital,

passing the nights in running from _salon_ to _salon_, and seldom

retiring to rest before morning: a worthy pupil of that Hercules of

debauchery, Richelieu, his master and his executioner. Terrified at the

delicate appearance of his child, his father dared not send him to

school, but had him brought up under his own eye, with all the patience

of an indulgent parent and the solicitude of a physician. Five years'

cares were sufficient to develop the intellectual capacities of a mind

at once lively and clear, and marvellously fitted by nature to receive

and retain the lessons of preceptors. At eleven years of age he

addressed a rhyming epistle to Voltaire, who replied,--

"You love verses, and I predict that you will make charming ones. Come

and see me, and be my pupil."

If Voisenon justified the prediction, he scarcely surpassed the

favorable sense which it incloses. Verbose, incorrect, poor in form,

pale and washy as diluted Indian ink, his verses occasionally display

witty touches, because every one was witty in the eighteenth century;

but to class them with the works of the poets of his day as _poetry_ is

impossible--they merit only being considered in the light of lemonade

made from Voltaire's well-squeezed lemons.

In many respects the prose of the eighteenth century, not being an art,

but rather the resource of unsuccessful poets, lent itself better than

did the muse to the idle fantasies of the Abbe de Voisenon. His facetiae,

his historiettes, his Oriental tales, reunited later (at least in part)

with the works of the Comte de Caylus, and with the libertine tales of

Duclos and the younger Crebillon, prove the facility with which he could

imitate Voltaire, while his lucubrations must be considered as far

inferior to the short tales of the latter author. For the most part too

free, too indecent, in short, to show their faces beside some

elaborately serious fragments which form what are called his works, they

figure in the work we have just named under the title of _Recueil de ces

Messieurs; Aventures des Bals des Bois; Etrennes de la St. Jean; Les

Ecosseuses; les Oeufs de Paques_, &c. We know, by the memoirs of the

time, that a society of men of letters, formed by Mademoiselle Quinaut

du Frene, and composed of fourteen members chosen by her, had proposed

to itself the high and difficult mission of supping well at stated

intervals, and of being immensely witty and extravagantly gay. At the

end of the half-year these effusions of wit and gayety were printed by

the society at the mutual expense of its members, and given to the world

under the title of _Recueil de ces Messieurs_.[Q] Deprived of the

illusive accompaniments of the lights, the sparkling eyes, the tinkling

glasses, and the indulgent good-nature engendered by an excellent

dinner, good wines, and an ample dessert, these table libertinages, when

read nearly a century afterwards, lose all their piquancy of flavor and

become simply nauseous. The readings, and consequently the dinners, took

place sometimes at the house of Mademoiselle Quinaut, sometimes at that

of the Comte de Caylus.

Having conceived a disgust for the profession of arms--for which he had

been originally intended--in consequence of having fought with and

wounded a young officer in a duel, he determined upon embracing the

ecclesiastical state; and shortly after taking orders was inducted by

Cardinal Fleury to the royal abbey of Jard--an easy government, the seat

of which was his own chateau of Voisenon.

As soon as he was actually a dignitary of the Church, he turned his

thoughts entirely to the stage! In compliance with the request of

Mademoiselle Quinaut, the new Abbe of Jard wrote a series of dramatic

pieces, among which may be cited, _La Coquette fixee_, _Le Reveil de

Thalie_, _Les Mariages assortis_, and _Le Jeune Grecque_, little

drawing-room comedies, which have not kept possession of the stage, and

to which French literature knows not where to give a place at the

present day, so far are they from offering a single recommendable

quality. The only style of composition in which the Abbe de Voisenon

might have, perhaps, distinguished himself, had he been seconded by an

intelligent musician, was the operatic. In this _baladin_ talent of his

there was something of the freedom and sparkle of the Italian abbes; and

yet the Abbe de Voisenon enjoyed during his life-time a high degree of

celebrity. Seeing the utter impossibility of justifying this celebrity

by his works, we must presume that it proceeded chiefly from his amiable

character, his pointed epigrammatical conversation, and in a great

measure, also, from his brilliant position in the world. And, after all,

did celebrity require other causes at a time when a man's success was

established, not by the publicity of the press, but from the words

dropped from his lips in the "world," and from the occasional

enunciation of a sparkling _bon mot_ quickly caught up and for a length

of time repeated? Were we to protest against this species of

_illustration_, as the French call it, we should be in the wrong: each

epoch has its own; since then times are altered: now-a-days, in France,

a man obtains celebrity through the medium of the press, formerly it was

by the _salons_. In general, the French _litterateurs_, especially the

journalists, may be said to write better now than they did then; but

where, we should like to know, is there now to be found a young writer

of thirty capable of creating and sustaining a conversation in a society

consisting of upwards of a hundred distinguished persons? The lackeys of

M. de Boufflers were, in all probability, more in their place in a

_salon_ than would be the most learned or witty writers of the present

day.

If the Abbe de Voisenon was not exactly an eagle as regards common sense

and intellectual attainments, what are we to think of M. de Choiseul,

who wished to appoint him minister of France at some foreign court? The

Abbe de Voisenon a minister! that man whom M. de Lauraguais called _a

handful of fleas_! But if he became not minister of France, it was

decreed by fate that he should be minister of somebody or other; he was

too incapable to escape this honor. Some years after the failure of this

ridiculous project of M. de Choiseul, the Prince-bishop of Spire

appointed him his minister plenipotentiary at the Court of France. His

admission into the bosom of the French Academy was all that was now

required to complete his happiness, and this honor was shortly

afterwards conferred upon him, for he was duly elected to the chair

vacated by the death of Crebillon.

At the age of fifty-two, with the intention of getting rid of his

asthma, his constant companion through life, he determined to try the

effect of mineral waters upon his enfeebled constitution. His journey

from Paris to Cautarets, and his sojourn in this head-quarters of

bitumen and sulphur, as related by himself in his letters to his

friends, may be considered as an historical portraiture of the method of

travelling, as pursued by the grandees of the time, as well as being the

truest pages of the idle, epicurean, pleasure-loving, yet infirm,

existence of the narrator.

"We passed through Tours yesterday (writes he to his friend

Favart, in his first letter, dated from Chatelherault the 8th

day of June, 1761), where Madame la Duchess de Choiseul

received all the honors due to the _gouvernante_ of the

province: we entered by the Mall, which is planted with trees

as beautiful as those of the Parisian Boulevards. Here we found

a mayor, who came to harangue the duchess. It happened that M.

Sainfrais, during the harangue, had posted himself directly

behind the speaker, so that every now and then his horse, which

kept constantly tossing its head, as horses will do, would give

him a little tap on the back--a circumstance which cut his

phrases in half in the most ludicrous manner possible; because

at every blow the orator would turn round to see what was the

matter, after which he would gravely resume his discourse,

while I was ready to burst with laughter the whole time. Two

leagues further on we had another rich scene; an ecclesiastic

stopped the carriage, and commenced a pompous harangue

addressed to M. Poisonnier, whom he kept calling _mon Prince_.

M. Poisonnier replied, that he was more than a prince, and that

in fact the lives of all princes depended upon him, for he was

a physician. 'What!' exclaimed the priest, 'you are not M. le

Prince de Talmont?' 'He has been dead these two years,' replied

the Duchesse de Choiseul. 'But who, then, is in this carriage?'

'It is Madame la Duchesse de Choiseul,' replied some one.

Forthwith, not a whit disconcerted, he commenced another

harangue, in which he lauded to the skies the excellent

education she had bestowed on her son. 'But I have no son,

monsieur,' replied the duchess quietly. 'Ah! you have no son; I

am very sorry for that;' and so saying his reverence put his

harangue in his pocket, and walked off.

"Adieu, my worthy friend. We shall reach Bordeaux on Thursday.

I intend to feed well when I get there."

What an edifying picture of the state of the high and low clergy of

France at this epoch is presented to us! The Abbe de Voisenon rolling

along in his carriage, indulging in the anticipatory delights of some

good 'feeds' when he shall get to Bordeaux; and a hungry priest

haranguing right and left the first comers who may present themselves,

in order to obtain the wherewithal to procure a dinner.

It is to Madame Favart that Voisenon writes from Bordeaux:--

"We arrived here at ten o'clock yesterday evening, and found

Marshal de Richelieu, who had crossed the Garonne to meet the

Duchesse de Choiseul. This city is beautiful viewed at a

distance--all that appertains to the exterior is of the best;

but what afflicts me most of all, is the sad fact that there

are no sardines to be had on account of the war. I was not

aware that the sardines had taken part against; however, I

revenged myself upon two ortolans, which I devoured for supper,

along with a _pate_ of red partridges _aux truffes_, which,

though made as long back as November last--as Marshal de

Richelieu assured me--was as fresh and as _parfume_ as if it

had been made but the night before."

If the reader should feel astonished that an asthmatical patient could

eat partridges and truffles without being horribly ill, his astonishment

will not be of long continuance. The following day Voisenon wrote to

Favart:--

"Oh, my dear friend, I have passed a frightful night. I was

obliged to smoke and take my _kermes_. I shall not be able to

see any of the 'lions' of the place. If I am three days

following in this state after I get to Cauterets, you will have

me back again with you by the end of the month."

One would suppose that after this gentle hint our abbe would be more

prudent; not a bit of it. In the same letter he adds:--

"The dinner-table yesterday was covered with sardines. At the

very first start I eat six in as many mouthfuls--a truly

delicious _morceau_; despite my _kermes_, I reckon upon eating

as many to-day, along with my two ortolans. We leave to-morrow,

and on Wednesday we shall reach Cauterets."

Thus, ill on the 11th in consequence of a monstrous supper taken on the

10th, we find him, for all that, on the following day devouring sardines

by the half-dozen, and ortolans again! On the 18th he writes from

Cauterets to his friend Favart:--

"I arrived yesterday in good health, but have slept badly,

because the house in which I lodge is situated over a torrent,

which makes a frightful noise. This country I can only compare

to an icy horror, like the tragedy of _Teree_."

Twelve days afterwards, Voisenon writes to Madame Favart:--

"Madame de Choiseul's uncle, who paid you so many compliments

in the green-room, arrived yesterday: he lodges in the same

house with me.... I introduced him this morning into one of the

best houses in Cauterets--indeed the very best house--where, I

must confess, I myself spend three parts of the entire day; in

a word, it is the pastry-cook's. This learned individual

compounds admirable tartlets, as well as some little cakes of

singular lightness; but above all, certain delicious little

puffs composed of cream and millet-flour, which he calls

_millassons_. I stuff them all day long. This makes the waters

turn sour on my stomach, and myself turn very yellow; but I am

tolerably well notwithstanding."

This gormandizing Abbe de Voisenon, ever hanging, as it were, between

_pates_ and his grave, becomes now a rather interesting subject of

study. We begin to speculate upon what it is that will finally carry him

off: his asthma, or the confectionary he daily swallows.

He writes to Favart:--

"I bathe every morning, and during this operation I bear a

striking resemblance to a match dipped in sulphur. I keep my

health, however, tolerably well, though still suffering from my

asthma, of which I fear I shall never be cured."

It would be a wonder if he should be cured, with his unfortunate table

excesses, which would have killed half-a-dozen healthy men. In vain do

we seek in his correspondence with Favart and his wife, a single thought

unconnected with the pleasures of the stomach. We have read with what

delight he sings the praises of a pastry-cook established at Cauterets,

famous for his millet-cakes and cream-puffs. His happiness did not stop

here:--

"A second pastry-cook (he cries), upon my reputation, has set up here.

There is a daily trial of skill between the two artists; I eat and

judge, and it is my stomach that pays the cost. I go to the bath, and

return to the oven. I shall come here again in the thrush season. We

have red partridges, which are brought here from all parts; they are

delicious."

In short, he remained so long stuffing confectionary at Cauterets, where

he had gone solely to take care of himself, and to live with the

strictest regularity, that on the eve of his departure he wrote sadly to

Madame Favart:--'I am just the same as when you saw me last: sometimes

asthmatical, and always gormandizing.' The sufferings which he

experienced during his sojourn at, Bareges, previous to his final return

to Paris, are proofs of the deplorable effects of the mineral waters

upon his health:--

"I am suffering dreadfully; and am now, while I write, laboring

under so violent an attack of asthma, that I cannot doubt but

that the air of this country is as bad for me as that of

Montrouge. If I am as bad to-morrow, I shall return to pass the

week at Cauterets, and on Saturday go on to Pau, where I shall

wait for the ladies who are to pass through on Monday, on their

way to Bayonne. I know I shall be in a miserable state during

the journey."

Such were the benefits derived by the Abbe de Voisenon from his four

months' sojourn at the baths of Cauterets and Bareges. He returned to

Voisenon infinitely worse than when he left it. On the eve of his

departure for home, where, as he said some time afterwards, he wished

_to be on the same floor with the tombs of his ancestors_, he devoured a

monstrous dinner on the Bareges mountains.

Finding that the mineral waters of the Pyrenees had failed in

reestablishing his health--that is, if he ever had health--the Abbe de

Voisenon abandoned physicians and their fruitless prescriptions, to seek

elsewhere remedies for the cure of his asthma, which became more and

more troublesome as he began to get into years. As he was constantly

speaking of his disease to everybody, and as everybody--at least all

those who wished to get into his good graces--spoke of it to him, he

learned one day that there existed in some garret of Paris a certain

abbe deeply learned in all the mysteries of occult chemistry, an adept

of the great Albert, the master of masters in empirical art. Like all

sorcerers, and all _savants_ of the eighteenth century, this abbe was

represented as being in a state of frightful misery and destitution. He

who possessed the secrets of plants and minerals, of fire and light, of

the generation of beings, had not the wherewithal to procure himself a

decent _soutane_, nor even a morsel of bread. Though, by the efforts of

his magic, he had reached a dizzy height on the paths of knowledge, it

was, alas! a fact but too true, that he was unable to maintain himself

more than a month in the same apartment--perhaps on account of his

indifference to the interests of his landlords. For all that he was a

marvellous being, inventing specifics for the cure of all diseases, and

consequently of asthma among the rest. It was even whispered, but

secretly and mysteriously, and with a sort of awe--for they were very

superstitious, though very atheistical, in the eighteenth century--that

all these specifics were comprised in one remedy, namely, the

celebrated AURUM POTABILE, or fluid gold. Now every one knows, or at

least ought to know, that potable gold, that is, gold in a cold and

fluid state, like wine, triumphs over every malady to which the human

frame is subject: it is health itself, perpetual youth, and would be no

less than immortality had not Paracelsus, who, they say, also possessed

the secret of potable gold, unfortunately died at the age of

thirty-three, or thirty-five: thus establishing a fatal argument against

its virtues in this respect. But one thought now possessed

Voisenon--that of getting hold, somehow or other, of this magic abbe,

and of enticing him to his chateau; but an insensate and monstrous

desire was this--a desire almost impossible to be satisfied, for it was

stated that this Prometheus repelled all advances. Persecuted by the

faculty, censured by the ecclesiastical tribunal, maltreated by the

police, who would not suffer anything in the shape of gold-making, he

had, in his savage misanthropy, renounced all further thoughts of

alleviating the pains of humanity at the cost of his repose and safety.

Here was a terrible state of perplexity for our asthmatical abbe, who,

for all that, did not lose courage, but set to work with all his might

to discover the great physician.

But where, or how, was he to discover a sorcerer in Paris? To whom could

he decently address himself? To what professional class? There are so

many people in the world ready to ridicule even the most respectable

things. Every time that Voisenon elbowed at the Tuileries, or in the

Palais Royal, an individual in a seedy cassock, he fancied that he had

discovered his man. Forthwith he would enter into conversation with him,

his heart fluttering with hope, until the moment came which would

convince him that he had been deceived. Though for the moment cast into

despair, he did not lose hope, but would the next day recommence his

voyages of discovery in search of potable gold. One morning he had a

sudden illumination:--"Since the archbishop," thought he, "has censured

the conduct of the abbe I have been so long in search of, the archbishop

must know where he lodges." Just as if sorcerers had lodgings! That very

day he repaired to the archbishop's court. If the reader wonders why our

abbe did not give the clerks whom he interrogated the name of his

mysterious priest, the answer is easy: it is simply because he did not

know his name; magicians seldom make themselves known but by their

works. This name, however, to his great and inexpressible joy, he was

soon to learn. After some researches made in the register of the

episcopal court, the clerk informed him that this abbe (a deplorable

subject by all accounts) was called Boiviel, and, at the period when the

acts of censure were passed upon him, lodged in the Rue de Versailles,

Faubourg Saint Marceau. Voisenon was there almost as soon as the words

were out of the clerk's mouth.

Voisenon knocked at every kennel of this deplorable street; not even a

bark replied to the name of the Abbe Boiviel. At length, at a seventh

floor above the mud, an old woman, who resided in a loft, to which

access was obtained by means of a rope-ladder, informed him that the

Abbe Boiviel had quitted the apartment about six months before, with the

avowed intention of going to lodge at Menilmontant; she added, that this

delay gave fair grounds for supposing that he must necessarily have

changed his quarters at least five or six times in the course of these

six months. Disappointed, but not discouraged, Voisenon descended from

the dizzy height, reflecting upon the sad distress to which a man might

be reduced, although possessing the secret of potable gold.

An almost incredible chance had so willed it, that the Abbe Boiviel had

changed his abode but three times since his descent from the garret of

the Rue de Versailles. From Menilmontant he had removed to Passy, and

from Passy to La Chapelle, where he now resided.

At length the two abbes met; but to what delicate manoeuvres the

seigneur of Voisenon was obliged to have recourse in accosting his

rugged _comfrere_, who was at that moment engaged in eating his

breakfast off a chair. He had sense enough to put off as long as

possible the true subject of his visit; besides, what cared he for

delays? He had found him at last, he was face to face with the

mysterious, infallible physician, the successor of the great Albert.

Boiviel was even more savage and morose than the Abbe de Voisenon had

anticipated. He spoke of offering his services to the Missionary Society

in order to get appointed to preach the Gospel in Japan, although, to

tell the truth, he did not believe over-much in Christianity. "And I do

not believe in Japan," might have perhaps replied the Abbe de Voisenon,

had he been in a joking humor: but the fact is, he was thunderstruck at

the enunciation of such a project. It was too provoking, when he, had at

length found the Abbe Boiviel, to hear that the Abbe Boiviel was going

to immolate himself in Japan.

Inspired by circumstance, that tenth muse which is worth all the nine

put together, Voisenon said to Boiviel, that he was aware of all the

persecutions which the clergy of Paris had made him endure for causes

which he did not desire to know; he refrained also from entering on the

subject of fluid gold. Touched by the exhibition of so much constancy in

misfortune, he had come, he said, to propose to the Abbe Boiviel to

inhabit his chateau of Voisenon, where, in the calm and repose of a

peaceful existence, and with a mind freed from the harassing cares of

the world, he would have leisure to meditate and write; that this

proceeding of his, though strange in appearance, was excusable, and to

be judged with an indulgent eye; he, the Abbe de Voisenon, was happy,

rich, powerful even. The Abbe Boiviel would be quite at home at the

chateau de Voisenon; his feelings of independence would not be

outraged; when he should be tired of sojourning there, he might quit the

chateau, remain absent as long as it pleased him, and return when it

suited his fancy. It is hardly necessary to say that the wild boar

allowed itself to be muzzled; that very evening a hired carriage

conducted the chemist, the sorcerer, the magician Boiviel, to the

Chateau de Voisenon. "I shall have my potable gold at last," thought the

triumphant Abbe, radiant with hope and exultation.

Installed at the chateau, the Abbe Boiviel conformed himself with a very

good grace to the monachal existence led by its inmates. The good

regimen of the house tended also to considerably soften the former

asperities of his demeanor; he spoke no more of Japan, but neither did

he speak of the potable gold, although Voisenon on several occasions

endeavored to obtain from him an explanation on this essential point.

Whenever our asthmatical abbe would lead the conversation towards

subjects relating to chemistry or alchemy, Boiviel would either avoid a

direct reply or else fall into a state of profound taciturnity: and yet

all his debts had been paid, including the various outstanding accounts

due to his numerous landlords, and his dinners at the Croix de

Lorraine--that memorable tavern, where all the abbes who received

fifteen sous for every mass said at St. Sulpice were accustomed to feed

daily. Several cassocks had also been purchased for him, several pairs

of stockings, and many shirts.

After a three months' residence at the chateau he had become fat, fresh,

and rosy, such as he had never before been at any previous epoch of his

life. Emboldened by the friendship he had shown to his guest, Voisenon

ventured one day to say to the Abbe Boiviel, that, skeptical and

atheistical as they falsely imagined him to be in the world, he

possessed, nevertheless, an absolute faith in alchemy; he denied neither

the philosopher's stone, nor the universal panacea, nor even the potable

gold. Now did he, or did he not, believe in potable gold? This was a

home-thrust Boiviel could no longer recoil; he _did_ believe in it; but

according to his idea the audacious chemist committed a great sin in

composing it: it was, so to speak, as though attacking the decrees of

creation to change into liquid what had been ordained a metal. A

sorcerer troubled with religious scruples appeared a strange spectacle

to the Abbe de Voisenon and one, too, that rather embarrassed him. He

did not, however, entirely renounce his conquest of the potable gold; he

waited three months longer, and during these three months fresh favors

were lavished on Boiviel, who habituated himself to these proceedings

with praiseworthy resignation.

Treated as a friend, called also by that title, Boiviel justified the

Abbe de Voisenon in saying to him one day, that he had no longer a hope

in any remedy whatsoever, save the potable gold, for the cure of his

asthma. Without the specific, as much above other remedies as the sun is

above fire, the only course left him was to die. Boiviel was moved, his

iron resolves were shaken, and his qualms of conscience ceded to the

voice of friendship. He warned his friend, however, that in order to

compose a little fluid gold much solid gold would be required. The first

essay would cost ten thousand livres at the very least. Voisenon, who

would have given twenty thousand to be cured, consented to the

sacrifice, thanking heartily his future liberator, who, on the following

day, commenced the great work. What sage deliberation did he bring to

the task! and how slowly did the work proceed! Day followed day, month

followed month, but as yet no gold, except that which the Abbe de

Voisenon himself contributed in pieces of twenty-four livres each. The

day at length arrived in which, the ten thousand livres being exhausted,

Boiviel informed his patient that the fluid gold was in flasks, and

would be ready for use in a month.

It was during this month that the alchemist Boiviel took leave of the

Abbe de Voisenon, on the pretext of going to see his old father, who

resided in Flanders. Before two months were out he would return to the

chateau, in order to observe the beneficial effects of the liquified

metal. Warmly embraced by his friend, overwhelmed with presents,

solicited to return as speedily as possible, Boiviel quitted the Chateau

de Voisenon, where he had lived for nearly a year, and in what manner we

have seen.

After the time allowed by Boiviel for the fluid gold to be fit for use

had elapsed, the Abbe de Voisenon began his course of the medicine. He

emptied the first, the second, and the third flask, awaiting the result

with exemplary patience; but an asthma is not to be cured in a week,

especially an asthma of forty years' standing.

Boiviel had not yet returned; he had now been four months in Flanders;

to these four months succeeded another four, but no Boiviel; the year

revolved, the flasks diminished, but still no Boiviel.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the Abbe Boiviel never reappeared,

and that he was nothing better than a charlatan and a thief. But the

singular part of the matter is, that the Abbe de Voisenon found his

asthma considerably relieved after a course of the fluid gold composed

by Boiviel; and his sole regret at the end of his days was, not having

foreseen the death, or disappearance--a matter quite as disastrous--of

his alchemist, who could have furnished him with the means of

compounding the elixir for himself as it might be wanted.

In order to show himself superior to the assaults of his enemy, our Abbe

would often endeavor to persuade himself that he was every whit as

active as he had formerly been; more active even than he had been in

his youth. On these occasions he would jump up from his easy-chair,

where he had been sitting groaning under an attack of the asthma; he

would cast his pillows on one side, his night-cap on the other, would

pitch his slippers to the other end of the room, and call loudly for his

domestics. In one of these deceitful triumphs of his will over his

feeble constitution, he rang one cold winter's morning for his _valet de

chambre_.

"My thick cloth trousers!" cried he, "my thick cloth trousers!"

"Why, Monsieur l'Abbe," timidly objected his faithful servitor, "what

can you be thinking of? you were very bad yesterday evening."

"That's very probable; I have nothing to do with what I was yesterday

evening. My thick cloth trousers, I tell you--now, my furred waistcoat!

Come, look sharp!"

"But, Monsieur l'Abbe, why quit your warm room, your snug arm-chair? You

are so pale."

"Pale, am I! that's better than ever, for I have been as yellow as a

quince all my life! Good, I have my trousers and waistcoat; fetch me my

redingote!"

"Your redingote! that you only put on when you are going out?"

"And it is precisely because I am going out that I ask for it. You argue

to-day like a true stage valet. Why should I not put on my redingote?

Are you afraid of it becoming shabby? Do you wish to steal it from me

while it is new?"

"I am afraid that you will increase your cough if you don't keep the

house to-day. It is very cold this morning."

"Very cold, is it, eh? so much the better. I like cold weather."

"It snows even very much, Monsieur l'Abbe."

"In that case, my large Polish boots."

"Your large Polish boots! And for what purpose?"

"Not to write a poem in, probably; for if Boileau very sensibly

remarked, that in order to write a good poem time and taste were

necessary, he did not add that boots were indispensable. Once for all, I

want my Polish boots to go out shooting in. Is not that plain enough,

Monsieur Mascarille?"

"Cough shooting, Monsieur l'Abbe?"

"_Maraud!_ wolf-shooting--in the wood. Come, quick, my boots, and no

chattering."

"Here are your boots, Monsieur l'Abbe. Truly you have no thought for

your health."

"Have you a design upon my boots, also? Be so good, most discursive

valet, as to fetch me my deer-skin gloves, my hat, and gun."

The Abbe de Voisenon was soon equipped with the aid of his valet, who,

during the operation of dressing, never ceased repeating to him:

"It is fearfully cold this morning. Dogs have been found frozen to death

in their kennels, fish dead in the fish-ponds, cattle dead in the

stables, birds dead on the trees, and even wolves dead in the forest."

"My good friend," replied the Abbe de Voisenon, "you have said too much;

your story of the wolves prevents me believing the rest: upon this I

start. Now listen to me. On my return from shooting I expect to find my

poultices ready, my asses-milk properly warmed, and my _tisanes_ mixed;

give directions about all this in the kitchen."

"Yes, Monsieur l'Abbe. He'll never return, that's certain," murmured the

valet, as he packed up his master in his great-coat, and drew his fur

cap well down over his ears.

Followed by three of his dogs, our abbe started on his shooting

excursion. At the very first step he took on leaving the court-yard, he

fell; but he was up in an instant, and brushed speedily along. It must

have been a strange spectacle to see this old man, as black as a mute at

a funeral, with his black gloves, black boots, black coat, all black in

short, tripping gayly along over the snow with three dogs at his heels,

sometimes whistling and shouting aloud, sometimes cracking his

pocket-whip, and occasionally pointing his fowling-piece in the

direction of a flight of crows.

He had passed through the village of Voisenon, and had just gained the

open country, when he was stopped at the entrance of a lane of small

cottages by a young girl, who, the instant she perceived him, cried out,

"Ah, monseigneur" (for many people styled him monseigneur), "it is

surely Providence that has sent you to us!"

"What is the matter?" inquired the abbe.

"Our grandfather is dying, and he is unwilling to die without

confession."

"But I have nothing to do with that, my child; that is the priest's

business."

"But are you not a priest, monseigneur?"

"Almost," replied our abbe, rather taken aback by this home-thrust, and

in a very bad humor besides at the interruption, "almost; but address

yourself in preference to the prior of the convent. Run to the chateau,

ring at the convent-gate; ring loudly, and reserve me for a better

occasion."

"Monseigneur," repeated the girl, "our grandfather has not time to wait;

he is dying--you must come."

"I tell you," replied the abbe, confused within himself at his refusal,

"I cannot go. I am, as you see, out shooting: the thing is utterly

impossible."

With these words he sought to pursue his way; but the young girl, who

could not comprehend the bad arguments made use of by the abbe, clung

obstinately to his coat skirts, and compelled him to turn round. Aroused

by the noise of this altercation, a few of the male population appeared

on the thresholds of their doors, others at their windows; and as a

village resembles a bundle of dry hay, which a spark will set in a

blaze, the wives joined their husbands, the children their mothers, and

soon the entire population flocked into the street to see what was the

matter.

The Abbe du Jard, seigneur of Voisenon, king of the country, felt deeply

humiliated amid the crowd which surrounded him, and which had already

begun to murmur at this refusal, as irreligious as it was inhuman.

But our poor abbe was not inhuman. The fact was, he had completely

forgotten the formula used on such occasions; and if the truth must be

told, as he was careless and indifferent in religious matters, rather

than hypocritical, his conscience reproached him for going to absolve or

condemn a fellow-creature when he inwardly felt how utterly unworthy he

was himself of judging others at the tribunal of the confessional.

Necessity, however, prevailed over his just scruples; which scruples,

however, be it said, could not be made use of as excuses to his vassals:

so, with downcast eyes and his reversed fowling-piece under his arm, he

permitted himself to be led to the cottage where lay the old man, who

was unwilling to render his last sigh without having made the official

avowal of his sins.

The villagers knelt in a circle before the door, whilst the abbe seated

himself by the side of the dying man, in order the better to receive his

confession.

Since the unlucky moment in which the Abbe de Voisenon had been balked

of his morning's sport, he had lost--for he had at times his intervals

of superstitious terror--the proud determination he had formed of not

believing himself ill on that day. But then, what signs of evil augury

had greeted him! He had tripped and fallen on leaving home; he had seen

flocks of crows; a weeping girl had dragged him to the bedside of a

terrified sinner--even now they were repeating the prayers for the dying

around him. The Abbe de Voisenon was overcome; his former temerity oozed

palpably away, he felt sick at heart, his ears tingled, his asthma

groaned within his chest.

"I am ill," thought he. "I was in the wrong to come out; why did I not

take my old servant's advice, and remain at home?"

Finally he lent an ear to the old man's confession.

"You were born the same day as myself!" exclaimed the abbe, at the

patient's first confidential communication; "you were born the same day

as myself!"

The old man continued, and here a new terror arose for our abbe.

"You have never heard mass to the end! And I," thought he, "have never

heard even the beginning for these last thirty years!"

The penitent continued:--

"I have committed, monseigneur, the great sin that you know."

"The great sin that I know! I know so many," thought the abbe. "What

sin, my friend?"

"Yea, the great sin--although married--"

"Ah! I understand!" Then, _sotto voce_, "My great sin, although a

priest."

A deplorable fatality, if it was a fatality, had so willed it that the

vassal should have fallen into the same snares as had his lord, who was

now called to judge him at his last hour.

When the confession was ended, the Abbe de Voisenon consulted his own

heart with inward terror, and after some hesitation he remitted his

penitent's sins, inwardly avowing to himself that the dying man ought,

at least, out of gratitude, to render him the same service.

The ceremony over, the abbe rose to depart: but his limbs failed him,

and they were actually obliged to carry him home, where he arrived in a

state of prostration that seriously alarmed his household. During the

remainder of that day he spoke to no one; wrapped up in the silence of

his own melancholy thoughts, he opened his lips only to cough. The night

was bad; icy shiverings passed over his frame: the image of this man, of

the same age, and burdened with the same sins as he himself had

committed, would not leave his memory. By daylight his trouble of mind

and body was at its height; he desired his valet to summon his physician

and the prior of the convent. "And immediately," added he,

"immediately."

Comprehending better this time the wishes of his master, the domestic

hastened to arouse the prior, whose convent almost adjoined the chateau,

and the physician, who had apartments in the chateau itself. This

physician was a young man, chosen by the celebrated Tronchin from among

his cleverest pupils at the express desire of the Abbe de Voisenon.

Seriously alarmed at the danger of the abbe, both prior and physician

hastened to obey the summons. M. de Voisenon was so ill last night.

Should they arrive in time? So equal and so prompt was their zeal that

both reached the abbe's bedroom door together. But when they opened it,

what was their astonishment to find that the bird had flown; our abbe

had got over his little fright, and had gone out shooting again.

The end of that fatal eighteenth century was now approaching; undermined

by years and debauchery, it was now like a ruined spend-thrift moving

away from the calendar of the world in rags; it was hideously old, but

its years inspired not respect. Old king, old ministers, old

generals--if indeed there were generals,--old courtiers, old mistresses,

old poets, old musicians, old opera dancers, broken down with _ennui_,

pleasure, and idleness--toothless, faded, rouged, and wrinkled--were

descending slowly to the tomb. Louis XV. formed one of the funeral

procession; he was taken to St. Denis between two lines of _cabarets_

filled with drunken revellers, madly rejoicing at being rid of this

plague, which another plague had carried off to the grave. Crebillon was

dead; the son of the great Racine, honored by the famous title of Member

of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, was taken off by a

malignant fever, and obtained from the grateful publicity of the day

the following necrological eulogium, as brief as it was eloquent: "M.

Racine, last of the name, died yesterday of a malignant fever; as a man

of letters he was long dead, having become stupefied by wine and

devotion." Twelve days afterwards Marivaux followed Racine to the grave.

The Abbe Prevost died of a tenth attack of apoplexy in the forest of

Chantilly. In the following spring the celebrated Madame de Pompadour

descended, at the age of forty-four, into the grave, after having

exhaled a _bon mot_ in guise of confession. Desirous, as it would

appear, of leaving this world like the rest of his worthy _comperes_,

the composer Rameau cried furiously to his confessor, whose lugubrious

note while intoning the service at his bedside offended the delicacy of

his ear, 'What the devil are you muttering there, Monsieur le Cure? you

are horribly out of tune!' And thereupon Master Rameau expired of a

putrid fever. And what think you, worthy reader, occupied the public the

day following the death of the most celebrated musician in Europe, the

king of the French school? Why, nothing less than this wonderful piece

of news: "Mademoiselle Mire, of the Opera, more celebrated as a

courtesan than as a _danseuse_, has interred her lover; on his tomb are

engraven these words:

MI RE LA MI LA."

A touching funeral oration, truly, for poor Rameau! Panard, the father

of the French vaudeville, died some days after Rameau; and the Parisian

public, with its national tenderness of heart, merely remarked, that

"the words could not be separated from the accompaniment."

You see, reader, how the ranks were thinning, how all these old candles

were expiring in their sockets, how the ball was approaching its end.

"Piron died yesterday," writes a journalist; and he adds, "They say he

received the cure of St. Roche very badly." What an admirable piece of

buffoonery! these cures going in turn to shrive the writers of the

eighteenth century, and having flung at their heads epigrams composed

for the occasion, perhaps, ten years before.

Louis XV. died soon after Piron. A few hours before his death he said to

Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon: "Although the king is answerable to God

alone for his conduct, you can say that he is sorry for having caused

any scandal to his subjects, and that from henceforth he desires to live

but for the support of faith and religion, and for the happiness of his

people!"

Like Rameau, Piron, Helvetius, and Pompadour, this good little king

Louis XV. must have his _bon mot_; he was sorry for having caused any

scandal to his subjects, and at his last moment of existence would live

from henceforth for the sole happiness of his people! "Can any thing be

finer than this?"

Finally came the Abbe de Voisenon's turn. Witty to his last hour, when

they brought home the leaden coffin, the exact form and dimensions of

which he had himself arranged and ordered beforehand, he said to one of

his domestics,--

"There is a great-coat, any how, that you will not be tempted to steal

from me."

He died on the 22d of November, 1775, aged sixty-eight.

FOOTNOTES:

[Q] This was the celebrated society called the _Academie de ces

Messieurs_: it numbered among its members all the more celebrated wits

of the day.

IRELAND IN THE LAST AGE.

Recollections of Curran.

From the London Times

If the work of Mr. Charles Phillips were a description of the Roman bar

in the time of Hadrian, it would scarcely be more completely than at

present the picture of a time and system entirely passed away; yet he

professes to give us--and performs his promise--a somewhat gossipping

and very amusing description of the Irish bar, and the great men

belonging to it, very little more than half a century since. But we

travel and change quickly in these days of steam and railroads; even

Time himself appears now to have attached his travelling carriage to a

locomotive, and in the space of one man's life performs a journey that

in staid and ancient days would have occupied the years of many

generations, and, as if in illustration of the fleeting nature of men

and things and systems at this time, here we find a contemporary (at

this moment hardly past the prime of life) giving us portraits, and

relating anecdotes of men with whom he, in his youth, lived in intimate

and professional relations, but who seem now as absolutely to belong to

a bygone order of things, as if they had wrangled before the Dikasts of

Athens, or pleaded before the Praetor at Rome. Mr. Phillips seems to feel

this, and, as the gay days of his sanguine youth flit by his memory, the

retrospect brings, as it will ever bring, melancholy, and even sadness,

with it. Yielding himself up to the dominion of feeling, in place of

keeping his reason predominant, he mourns over the past, as if, in

comparison with the present, it were greatly more worthy. Forgetting

that there is a change also in himself; that the capacity for enjoyment

is largely diminished; that hope has been fulfilled, or is for ever

frustrate; he tests the present by his own emotions, instead of weighing

with philosophic _indifference_ the relative merits of the system that

he describes, and of that in which he lives. We are told--

"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view;"

but, when age comes upon us, we must turn and look back, if we desire to

enjoy this pleasing hallucination.

But in what is the present of Ireland so different from the past, in

which our fathers lived? And what do these repinings mean? What is the

charm that has for ever faded? The answer to this question, if complete,

would occupy a volume, for the composition of which that of Mr. Phillips

might well serve in the character of _une piece historique_, abounding,

as it does, in apt and instructive illustration, and giving, by its

aggregation of anecdotes and descriptions, a somewhat confused but

still interesting and lively picture of a very curious and stirring

period. There lies, indeed, at the bottom of this inquiry a question

with which the practical statesman has now little reason to trouble

himself, but which, nevertheless, to the speculative philosopher, cannot

fail to be a subject of never-failing interest.

The great physical discoveries of modern times, by which the powers of

nature are made to act in subservience to the use and comfort of

mankind, steadily tend to one great political result, viz., the

permanently uniting and knitting together of much larger numbers of men

into one and the same community, and subjecting them to one and the same

Government, and that Government one of law and not of force, than was

ever known or possible during the early days of man's history. This

result, as regards the peace of the world and all the material comforts

of life, is highly favorable. Whether the same can be said, of the

mental vigor and moral excellence of the human race is a question upon

which men may speculate, but which time alone can satisfactorily answer.

The small, contentious, and active communities of Greece; the little,

ill-governed, yet vigorous Republics of modern Italy, stand out in the

history of mankind bright and illustrious beyond all hope of comparison;

and, from the wondrous intellects that appeared among them, they have

proved to all succeeding times a never-failing subject of admiration,

envy, and despair. Just in proportion to our own advancement in art,

literature, and science, is the intensity of our astonishment, of our

envy, and of our despondency. We endeavor to compete with, but can never

equal them; we imitate, but, like all imitators, we are condemned to

mediocrity; it is only when we attempt to explore some new and untrod

region of art or science that we can pretend to the dignity even of

comparison. And these regions are rare indeed.

But, if we compare our own social condition with that of the Greeks or

the Italians--if we look into their houses, their cities, and their

fields,--if we acquire an accurate and vivid conception of the

insecurity of life, of property, and of peace among them,--and if we

measure the happiness of life by the comforts of every day existence,

then, indeed, the superiority belongs to ourselves; and we may be led to

ask, whether the advantages of both conditions of political and social

existence may not be united; and to that end seek to learn what it was

that brought out into such vigorous relief the wonderful mental activity

of the two periods, which form such peculiar and hitherto unequalled

epocha in the history of mankind. We shall find, if we pursue this

inquiry into other times and among other people, that there was one

circumstance, among many others indeed, of peculiar weight and

importance, which then exercised and has never failed to exercise,

wheresoever it has existed, a vast influence upon the mental and moral

character of the people--we mean a feeling of intense _nationality_.

This feeling is not all that is required; without it no great

originality or vigor in a people is probable, and where it has been

strongly manifest, it has generally led to great deeds, and much mental

activity. The character of this manifestation will, indeed, greatly

depend upon the natural character of the people--upon the peculiar state

of their civilization, and upon their political condition. If these be

all favorable, the spirit of nationality is divine, and manifest in

great and ennobling deeds and thoughts; but, if adverse, then the spirit

will be destructive, and vice will be quickened into fatal activity.

In Ireland, at the end of the eighteenth century, a remarkable series of

events cherished, if it did not indeed produce, this sentiment of a

separate nationality and independence. Conquerors and conquered, in

spite of social and religious distinctions, had long since coalesced

into one people; and the successful revolt of our American colonies,

induced the people of Ireland to demand for themselves freedom and

independence also. With arms in their hands the Volunteers wrung from

England an independent Parliament in 1782; and in the eighteen years

which followed, all that is really great in the history of Ireland, is

comprised. The Volunteers, indeed, obtained independence, but that was

all. The constitution of the Irish was, as before, narrow and

mischievous, oppressive and corrupt; but it was Irish, and independent

of the Parliament of England. And the struggles of an independent

people, endeavoring, by their own efforts, to reform their own

institutions, led to the rising of that brilliant galaxy of statesmen,

orators, wits, and lawyers, to which Irishmen of the present day, almost

without exception, refer with grief and despondency, not unmixed with

indignation, when wishing to make the world appreciate the evils their

country has suffered in consequence of its union with England. But,

unhappily, the great spirit of freedom was awakened in evil times.

Great, vigorous, and almost glorious was this wonderful manifestation of

its power; but eventually the horrible corruption and vice of the period

bore all before it, and extinguished every chance of benefit from the

acquisition of independence. Great men appeared, but they were

powerless. Of the remarkable period in which they lived, however, every

memorial is of interest. With the society of which they formed a part,

so different from our own--with the character and manners of the men

themselves, their history, their good sayings and wild deeds, every

student of history wishes to become acquainted, and seizes with avidity

upon every piece of evidence from which authentic information respecting

them may be gathered--and, as a portion of this evidence, the work of

Mr. Phillips deserves consideration.

Among the most remarkable of the many distinguished characters of this

stirring period was John Philpot Curran,--among Irish advocates, as was

Erskine among those of England, _facile princeps_. With him, when on

the bench as Master of the Rolls in Ireland, Mr. Phillips, himself then

a junior at the Irish bar, became acquainted. Acquaintance became

intimacy, and intimacy led to friendship, which lasted without

interruption to the day of Curran's death. Admiration and affection

induced Mr. Phillips to gather together memorials of his deceased

friend, round whose portrait he has grouped sketches of many of his

celebrated cotemporaries. He says in his preface--

"My object has been, touching as lightly as possible on the politics of

the time, to give merely personal sketches of the characters as they

appeared upon the scene to me. Many of them were my acquaintances--some

of them my intimates; and the aim throughout has been a verisimilitude

in the portraiture;--in short, to make the reader as familiar with the

originals as I was myself."

And a more curious collection of likenesses was never crowded into one

canvas. They all, indeed, have a strong family resemblance, but

certainly they are like nothing else in nature; and to us, living in

grave, and possibly dull and prosaic England--and in this our matter of

fact and decorous age--the doings of the society which they have made

illustrious, appear more like a mad _saturnalia_ than the sober and

commonplace procedure of rational men. The whole people--every class,

profession, and degree--seemed to consider life but a species of

delirious dance, and a wild and frantic excitement the one sole

pleasure. Repose, thoughtfulness, and calm, they must have considered a

premature death. Every emotion was sought for in its extreme, and a

rapid variation from merriment to misery, from impassioned love to

violent hate, was the ordinary (if in such an existence any thing could

be deemed ordinary)--the common and ordinary condition of life.

Laughter, that was ever on the brink of tears--a wild joy, that might in

an instant be followed by hopeless despondency--alternations from

sanguine and eager hope to blank and apparently crushing despair,--such

was Irish life, in which every one appeared to be acting a part, and

striving to appear original by means of a strained and laborious

affectation. Steady, continued, and rational industry, was either

unknown or despised; economy was looked upon as meanness--thrift was

called avarice--and the paying a just debt, except upon compulsion, was

deemed conduct wholly unworthy of a gentleman. Take the account Mr.

Phillips himself gives. He speaks of the Irish squire; but the Irish

squire was the raw material out of which so-called Irish gentlemen were

made. "The Irish squire of half a century ago _scorned_ not to be in

debt; it would be beneath his dignity to live within his income; and

next to not incurring a debt, the greatest degradation would have been

voluntarily to _pay one_." And yet was there great pretension to

_honor_, but a man of honor of those days would in our time be

considered a ruffian certainly, and probably a blackleg or a swindler.

"It was a favorite boast of his (the first Lord Norbury) that he began

life with fifty pounds, and a pair of hair-trigger pistols." "They

served his purpose well.... The luck of the hair-triggers triumphed, and

Toler not only became Chief Justice, but the founder of two peerages,

and the testator of an enormous fortune. After his promotion, the code

of honor became, as it were, engrafted on that of the Common Pleas; the

noble chief not unfrequently announcing that he considered himself a

judge only while he wore his robes." The sort of law dispensed by this

fire-eating judge might be easily conceived even without the aid of such

an anecdote as the following: "A nonsuit was never heard of in his time.

Ill-natured people said it was to draw suitors to his court." Toler's

reason for it was that he was too _constitutional_ to interfere with a

jury, Be that as it may, a nonsuit was a nonentity, 'I hope, my Lord,'

said counsel in a case actually commanding one, 'your Lordship will, for

once, have the courage to nonsuit? In a moment the hair-triggers were

uppermost. 'Courage! I tell you what, Mr. Wallace, there are two sorts

of courage--courage to shoot, and courage to nonshoot--and I have both;

but nonshoot now I certainly will not; and argument is only a waste of

time.' "I remember well," says Mr. Phillips, when speaking of another

judge, Mr. Justice Fletcher, "at the Sligo summer assizes for 1812,

being counsel in the case of 'The King _v._ Fenton,' for the murder of

Major Hillas in a duel, when old Judge Fletcher thus capped his summing

up to the jury: 'Gentlemen, it's my business to lay down the law to you,

and I will. The law says, the killing a man in a duel is murder, and I

am bound to tell you it is murder; therefore, in the discharge of my

duty, I tell you so; but I tell you at the same time, a _fairer duel_

than this I never heard of in the whole _coorse_ of my life.' It is

scarcely necessary to add that there was an immediate acquittal." By way

of giving some idea of the character of society then, the following

enumeration is supplied by the memory of Mr. Phillips:--

"Lord Clare, afterwards Lord Chancellor, fought Curran,

afterwards Master of the Rolls. So much for equity; but common

law also sustained its reputation. Clonmel, afterwards Chief

Justice, fought two Lords and two Commoners,--to show his

impartiality, no doubt. Medge, afterwards Baron, fought his own

brother-in-law, and two others. Toler, afterwards Chief Justice

of the Common Pleas, fought three persons, one of whom was

Fitzgerald, even in Ireland the 'fire-eater,' _par excellence_.

Patterson, also afterwards Chief Justice of the same court,

fought three country gentlemen, one of them with guns, another

with swords, and wounded them all! Corry, Chancellor of the

Exchequer, fought Mr. Grattan. The Provost of Dublin

University, a Privy Councillor, fought Mr. Doyle, a Master in

Chancery, and several others. His brother, collector of

Customs, fought Lord Mountmorris. Harry Deane Grady, counsel to

the Revenue, fought several duels; and 'all hits,' adds

Barrington, with unction. Curran fought four persons, one of

whom was Egan, Chairman of Kilmainham; afterwards his friend,

with Lord Buckinghamshire. A duel in these days was often a

prelude to intimacy."

In spite, nevertheless, of this rude, nay, almost wild condition of

society,--in spite of a most fantastic affectation attending nearly

every act and thought and word,--yet were Curran and his cotemporaries

men of great and vigorous ability. Grattan, Curran, and Flood, deserve

indeed to take rank among the foremost class of their own age,--among

the men of genius of every age and country. If we speak of them as

orators, and wish to judge of their excellence with relation to the

great orators of our own country, we must bear in mind the character of

the society in which they lived, and of the assemblies they addressed.

It would be unjust to try them by the rules of our fastidious taste and

undemonstrative manners. They addressed Irishmen, and Irishmen just when

most excited, and indulging in all the wild sallies of a dearly-prized

and lately acquired independence. What to us would appear offensive rant

and disgusting affectation, would, in the Irish House of Commons, have

been but the usual manifestation of strong feeling, and was absolutely

required, if the speaker desired to move as well as convince his

auditory.

If, however, we seek to know what was the virtue of these men, more

especially that of Curran, we must probe to the bottom the corruptions

and baseness of that society, which deserves to be branded as among the

most base and the most corrupt that history has hitherto described. The

temptations which England employed, the horrible corruption and

profligacy she fostered, must be fully known, if we desire to do justice

to the men who came out undefiled from that filthy ordeal.

THE LOST LETTER.

From Chambers' Papers for the People.

I.

One night, between twenty and thirty years ago, a party were assembled

in the drawing-rooms of a house situated in one of the most spacious

squares of the great metropolis. The brightly lighted lamps lent an

additional lustre to yet brighter eyes, and the sprightly tones of

various instruments accompanied the graceful evolutions of the dancers,

as they threaded the mazes of the country-dance, cotillon, or quadrille;

for waltz, polka, and schottish, were then unknown in our ball-rooms.

Here and there sat a couple in a quiet corner, evidently enjoying the

pleasures of a flirtation, while one pair, more romantic or more serious

than the others, had strayed out upon the balcony, to indulge more

unrestrainedly in the conversation, which, to judge by their low and

earnest tones, and abstracted air, seemed deeply interesting to both.

It was now long past the hour 'of night's black arch, the keystone,' and

the early dawn of a midsummer morning was already bestowing its first

calm sweet smile on the smoke-begrimed streets and world-worn

thoroughfares of mighty London, as well as on the dewy hay-fields, shady

lanes, green hedgerows, and quiet country homes of rural England. The

morning star, large, mild, and lustrous, was declining in the clear sky;

and on the left of the lovely planet lay a soft purple cloud, tinged on

the edge with the lucid amber of the dawning day. A light breeze just

stirred the leaves of the trees in the square garden, and fanned the

warm cheeks of the two spectators, as, suddenly silent, they stood

feasting their eyes and hearts on the surpassingly beautiful scene

before them, and marvelling at the remarkable purity of the atmosphere,

which, in the foggy metropolis of Britain, seemed almost to realize the

Venetian transparency of the pictures of Canaletti. Perhaps it may be as

well to take advantage of the pause to describe the two lovers, for that

they were lovers you have of course already guessed.

A handsomer pair, I am sure, you would never wish to see! The well-knit,

well-proportioned figure of the gentleman bespoke at once activity and

ease, while the spirited, intelligent expression of his

countenance--dark-complexioned as that of an Andalusian--would have

given interest to far plainer features. The glance of his dark eye, as

it rested fondly on his fair companion, or was turned abroad on the

world, told alternately of a loving heart and a proud spirit. Philip

Hayforth was one who would have scorned to commit an ignoble action, or

to stain his soul with the shadow of a falsehood for all the treasures

and the blessings the earth has to bestow; but he was quick to resent an

injury, and slow to forget it, and not for all the world would he have

been the first to sue for a reconciliation. Like many other proud

people, however, he was open-hearted and generous, and ready to forgive

when forgiveness was asked; the reason of which might be, that a

petition for pardon is, to the spirit of a proud man, a sort of homage

far more gratifying than the most skilful flattery, since it establishes

at once his own superiority. But to his Emily, Philip was all

consideration and tenderness, and she, poor girl, with the simple faith

of youth and love, believed him to be perfection, and admired even his

pride. A very lovely girl was Emily Sherwood--gifted with a beauty of a

rare and intellectual cast. As she now stood leaning on the arm of her

companion, her tall yet pliant and graceful figure enveloped in the airy

drapery of her white dress, with her eyes turned in mute admiration

towards the dawning day, it would have required but a slight stretch of

the imagination to have beheld in her a priestess of the sun, awaiting

in reverent adoration the appearance of her fire-god. Her complexion and

features, too, would have helped to strengthen the fantasy, for the one

was singularly fair, pale, and transparent, and the other characterized

by delicacy, refinement, and a sort of earnest yet still enthusiasm. Her

hair, of the softest and palest brown, was arranged in simple yet

massive plaits around her finely-shaped head, and crowned with a wreath

of 'starry jessamine.' From the absence of color, one might have

imagined that her beauty would have been cold and statue-like; but you

had only to glance at her soft, intellectual mouth, or to look into her

large, clear, hazel eyes, which seemed to have borrowed their sweet,

thoughtful, chastened radiance from the star whose beams were now fast

paling in the brightening sky, to learn that Emily Sherwood could both

think and love.

"Dear Philip," she said at last, in that low tone which is the natural

expression of all the finer and deeper emotions, "is it not beautiful? I

feel at this moment as if I were almost oppressed with happiness--as if

this were but an intense dream of love and beauty, that must, as

sentimental people say, 'be too bright to last.' I never felt as I do

now in all my life before."

"Nor I neither, my Emily, my sweet little poetess; but I suppose it is

because we love, for love intensifies all the feelings."

"All the best feelings."

"The whole nature, I think. It is, for instance, more difficult to bear

a slight from those we love than from a comparatively indifferent

person."

"A slight! but there can be no such thing as a slight between those who

love perfectly--as we do. Are we not all in all to each other? Is not

our happiness indivisible?"

"It is my pride and joy to believe so, my sweet Emily. I know in my own

heart that the needle is not more true to the magnet than my thoughts

and feelings are to you. It shall be the chief care of my life to save

you from all uneasiness; but, Emily, I expect the same devotion I give:

unkindness from you, of all the world, I could not and would not

endure."

"Oh, Philip, Philip!" she said, half tenderly, half reproachfully, "why

should you say this? I do not doubt _you_, dear Philip, for I judge your

love by my own."

He looked into the truthful and affectionate eyes which were raised so

trustingly to his face, and replied, in a voice tremulous with emotion,

"Forgive me, Emily. I trust you entirely; but I had started an idea, the

barest contemplation of which was insupportable--maddening, because of

the very excess of my affection. In short, Emily, I know--that is, I

suspect--your father looked for a higher match for you than I am. Report

says that his prejudices are strong in favor of birth, and that he is

very proud of his ancient blood; and the idea did cross me for a moment,

that when you were with him he might influence you to despise me."

"My father _is_ proud; but, dear Philip, is nobody proud but he? And

notwithstanding his prejudices, as you call them, I can assure you, you

are not more honorable yourself in every act and thought than he is. He

has consented to our marriage, and therefore you need not fear him, even

if you cannot trust me alone."

"Oh, Emily, pardon me! And so you think me proud. Well, perhaps I am;

and it is better that you should know it, as you will bear with it, I

know, for my sake, my best, my truest Emily; and I shall repay your

goodness with the most fervent gratitude. Yes, I feel with you that no

cloud can ever come between us two."

Emily Sherwood was the eldest daughter of Colonel Sherwood, a cadet of

one of the proudest families in England; and which, though it had never

been adorned with a title, looked down with something like contempt on

the abundant growth of mushroom nobility which had sprung up around it,

long after it had already obtained the dignity which, in the opinion of

the Sherwoods, generations alone could bestow. Colonel Sherwood

inherited all the pride of his race--nay, in him it had been increased

by poverty; for poverty, except in minds of the highest class--that rare

class who estimate justly the true value of human life, and the true

nature of human dignity--is generally allied either with pride or

meanness. Of course when I speak of poverty I mean comparative

poverty--I allude to those who are poorer than their station. In a

retired part of one of the eastern counties, Colonel Sherwood struggled

upon his half-pay to support a wife and seven children, and as far as

possible to keep up the appearance he considered due to his birth and

rank in society. Emily had been for two seasons the belle of the country

balls; and the admiration her beauty and manners had everywhere excited,

had created in the hearts of her parents a hope that she was destined to

form an alliance calculated to shed a lustre on the fading glory of the

Sherwoods. But, alas! as Burns sings--

"The best laid schemes of mice and men

Gang aft ajee."

During a visit to some relatives in London, Emily became acquainted with

Philip Hayforth; and his agreeable manners and person, his intelligent

conversation and devotion to herself, had quickly made an impression

upon feelings which, though susceptible, were fastidious, and therefore

still untouched. Then, too, the romantic ardor with which his attachment

was expressed, the enthusiasm he manifested for whatever was great,

good, or beautiful, aroused in Emily all the latent poetry of her

nature. Naturally imaginative, and full even of passionate tenderness,

but diffident and sensitive, she had hitherto, from an instinctive

consciousness that they would be misunderstood or disapproved,

studiously concealed her deeper feelings. Hence had been generated in

her character a degree of thoughtfulness and reserve unusual in one of

her years. Now, however, that she beheld the ideas and aspirations she

had so long deemed singular, perhaps reprehensible, shadowed forth more

powerfully and definitely by a mind more mature and a spirit more

daring than her own, her heart responded to its more vigorous

counterpart; and at the magic touch of sympathy, the long pent-up waters

flowed freely. She loved, was beloved, and asked no more of destiny. It

was not, it may be supposed, without some reluctance that Colonel

Sherwood consented to the demolition of the aerial castles of which his

beautiful Emily had so long been the subject and the tenant, and made up

his mind to see her the wife of a man who, though of respectable

parentage, could boast neither title nor pedigree, and was only the

junior partner in a mercantile firm. But then young Hayforth bore the

most honorable character; his prospects were said to be good, and his

manners unexceptionable; and, above all, Emily was evidently much

attached to him; and remembering the days of his own early love, the

father's heart of the aristocratic old colonel was fairly melted, and he

consented to receive the young merchant as his son-in-law. The marriage,

however, was not to take place till the spring of the following year.

Meanwhile the lovers agreed to solace the period of their separation by

long and frequent letters. Philip's last words to Emily, as he handed

her into the postchaise in which she was to commence her homeward

journey, were, "Now write to me very often, my own dearest Emily, for I

shall never be happy but when hearing from you or writing to you; and if

you are long answering my letters, I shall be miserable, and perhaps

jealous." She could only answer by a mute sign, and the carriage drove

away. Poor, agitated Emily, half happy, half sad, leaned back in it, and

indulged in that feminine luxury--a hearty fit of tears. As for Philip,

he took a few turns in the park, walking as if for a wager, and feeling

sensible of a sort of coldness and dreariness about every object which

he had never remarked before. Then he suddenly recollected that he must

go to the counting-house, as he was "very busy." He did not, however,

make much progress with his business that day, as somehow or other he

fell into a reverie over every thing he attempted.

Nothing could exceed the regularity of the lovers' correspondence for

the first two or three months, while their letters were written on the

largest orthodox sheets to be had from the stationer's--post-office

regulations in those days not admitting of the volumes of little notes

now so much in vogue. At last Emily bethought herself of working a purse

for Philip, in acknowledgment of a locket he had lately sent her from

London. Generally speaking, Emily was not very fond of work; but somehow

or other no occupation, not even the perusal of a favorite poem or

novel, had ever afforded her half the pleasure that she derived from the

manufacture of this purse. Each stitch she netted, each bead she strung,

was a new source of delight--for she was working for Philip. Love is the

true magic of life, effecting more strange metamorphoses than ever did

the spells of Archimago, or the arts of Armida--the moral alchemy which

can transmute the basest things into the most precious. It is true of

all circumstances, as well as of personal qualities, that

"Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity."

The purse was quickly finished, and dispatched to Philip, together with

a letter. Emily was in high spirits at the prospect of the answer. She

danced about the house, singing snatches of songs and ballads, and

displaying an unusual amount of gayety; for, though generally cheerful,

she was of too thoughtful a disposition to be often merry. Philip, she

was sure, would write by return of post. How she wished the time were

come! She knew pretty well, to be sure, what he would say; but what did

that signify? She longed to feast her eyes on the words his hand had

traced, and to fancy the tones and the looks which would have

accompanied them had they been spoken instead of written. The expected

day came at last, but the post-bag contained no letter for Emily. At

first she could hardly believe it; her countenance fell, and for a few

minutes she seemed much disappointed; but never mind, the letter would

come to-morrow, and she soon began to trip about and to sing almost as

gayly as before. But another day passed, and another and another, and

still no letter! Poor Emily's blithe voice was mute now, and her light

step rarely heard. Sometimes she tried to read, or to play on the piano,

but without much success; while her anxious looks, and the tear which

occasionally might be seen to glisten in her eye, betrayed the trouble

within. A whole week elapsed, a longer period than had ever passed

before without a letter from Philip Hayforth--a fortnight--a month--and

the poor girl's appetite failed, her nights were sleepless, and her

drooping figure and pining looks told of that anxious suffering, that

weary life-gnawing suspense, which is ten times more hard to bear than

any evil, however great, of which we can ascertain the nature and

discern the limits. Could Philip be ill? Could he--No, he could not be

inconstant. Ought she to write to him again? But to this question her

parents answered "No. It would be unfeminine, unladylike, undignified.

If Mr. Hayforth were ill, he would doubtless write as soon as he was

able; and if he were well, his conduct was inexcusable, and on Emily's

part rendered any advance impossible." Poor Emily shrank from

transgressing what her parents represented as the limits due to delicacy

and decorum, and she would have died rather than have been guilty of a

real impropriety, or have appeared unfeminine in the eyes of Philip

Hayforth; and yet it did often suggest itself to her mind--rather,

however, in the shape of an undefined feeling than of a conscious

thought--that the shortest, best, most straight-forward way of

proceeding, was to write at once to Mr. Hayforth, and ask an

explanation. She could not herself see clearly how this could be wrong;

but she supposed it must be so, and she acknowledged her own ignorance

and inexperience. Emily was scarcely twenty; just at the age when an

inquiring and thoughtful mind can no longer rely with the unquestioning

faith of childhood on assertions sanctioned merely by authority, and

when a diffident one is too timid to venture to trust to its own

suggestions. It is only after much experience, or one of those bitter

mistakes, which are the great lessons of life, that such a character

learns that self-reliance, exercised with deliberation and humility, is

the only safeguard for individual rectitude. Emily, therefore, did not

write, but lived on in the silent, wasting agony of constant expectation

and perpetual disappointment. Her mother, in the hope of affording her

some relief, inquired in a letter she was writing to her relative in

London, if the latter had lately seen Mr. Hayforth. The answer was like

a death-blow to poor Emily. Her mother's correspondent had "met Mr.

Hayforth walking with a lady. He had passed her with a very stiff bow,

and seemed inclined to avoid her. He had not called for a long time. She

could not at all understand it." Colonel Sherwood could now no longer

contain his indignation. He forbade the mention of Philip Hayforth's

name, declaring that "his Emily was far too good and beautiful for the

wife of a low-born tradesman, and that he deserved the indignity now

thrown upon his family for ever having thought of degrading it by the

permission of such a union. And his darling child would, he knew, bear

up with the spirit of the Sherwoods." Poor Emily had, it is to be

feared, little of the spirit of the Sherwoods, but she tried to bear up

from perhaps as good a motive. But it was a difficult task, for she was

well-nigh broken-hearted. She now never mentioned Philip Hayforth, and

to all appearance her connection with him was as if it had never been;

but, waking or sleeping, he was ever present to her thoughts. Oh! was it

indeed possible that she should never, _never_ see him again? No, it

could not be; he would seek her, claim her yet, her heart said; but

reason whispered that it was madness to think so, and bade her at once

make up her mind to her inevitable fate. But this she could not do--not

yet at all events. Month after month of the long dreary winter dragged

slowly on; her kind parents tried to dissipate her melancholy by taking

her to every amusement within reach, and she went, partly from

indifference as to what became of her, partly out of gratitude for their

kindness. At last the days began to lengthen, and the weather to

brighten; but spring flowers and sunny skies brought no corresponding

bloom to the faded hopes and the joyless life of Emily Sherwood. The

only hope she felt was "the hope which keeps alive despair."

One May morning, as she was listlessly looking over in a newspaper the

list of marriages, her eye fell upon a well-known name--the name of one

who at that very time ought to have knelt at the altar with her. She

uttered neither scream nor cry, but clasping her hands with one upward

look of mute despair, fell down in a dead faint. For many days she was

very ill, and sometimes quite delirious; but her mother tended her with

the most assiduous affection, while her comfort and recreation seemed

her father's sole care. They were repaid at last by her recovery, and

from that time forth she was less miserable. In such a case as Emily's,

there is not only the shock to the affections, but the terrible wrench

of all the faculties to be overcome, which ensues on the divorce of the

thoughts from those objects and that future to which they have so long

been wedded. There is not only the breaking heart to be healed, but the

whole mental current to be forcibly turned into a different channel from

that which alone habit has made easy or pleasant. "The worst," as it is

called, is, however, easier to be endured than suspense; and if Emily's

spirits did not regain their former elasticity, she ere long became

quite resigned, and comparatively cheerful.

More than a year had elapsed since that bright spring morning on which

she had beheld the irrefragable proof of her lover's perfidy, when she

received an offer of marriage from a gentleman, of good family and large

property. He had been struck by her beauty at a party where he had seen

her; and after a few meetings, made formal proposals to her father

almost ere she was aware that he admired her. Much averse to form a new

engagement, she would at once have declined receiving his addresses, had

her parents not earnestly pressed the match as one in every respect

highly eligible. Overcome at last by their importunities, and having, as

she thought, no object in existence save to give pleasure to them, she

yielded so far to their wishes as to consent to receive Mr. Beauchamp as

her future husband, on condition that he should be made acquainted with

the history of her previous engagement, and the present state of her

feelings. She secretly hoped that when he learned that she had no heart

to give with her hand, he would withdraw his suit. But she was mistaken.

Mr. Beauchamp, it is true, knew that there was such a word as _heart_,

had a notion that it was a term much in vogue with novel-writers, and

was sometimes mentioned by parsons in their sermons; but that _the

heart_ could have any thing to do with the serious affairs of life never

once entered into his head to suppose. He therefore testified as much

satisfaction at Emily's answer, as if she had avowed for him the deepest

affection. They were shortly afterwards married, and the pensive bride

accompanied her husband to her new home--Woodthorpe Hall; an ancient,

castellated edifice, situated in an extensive and finely-wooded park on

an estate in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

But I have too long neglected Philip Hayforth--too long permitted a

cloud to rest upon his honor and constancy. He was not, in truth, the

heartless, light-minded wretch that I fear you may think him. Pride,

not falsehood or levity, was the blemish in his otherwise fine

character; but it was a very plague-spot, tainting his whole moral

nature, and frequently neutralizing the effect of his best qualities. He

had been quite as much charmed with Emily's present and Emily's letter,

as she had ever ventured to hope, and had lost not a moment in writing

to her in return a long epistle full of the fervent love and gratitude

with which his heart was overflowing. He had also mentioned several

affairs of mutual interest and of a pressing nature, but about which he

was unwilling to take any steps without the concurrence of "his own

dearest and kindest Emily." He therefore entreated her to write

immediately; "to write by return of post, if she loved him." But this

letter never reached its destination: it was lost--a rare occurrence

certainly, but, as most of us are aware from our own experience, not

unknown. And now began with Philip Hayforth the same agony which Emily

was enduring--nay, a greater agony; for there was not only the same

disappointed affection, the same heart-sickness, the same weary

expectation, but there was the stronger suffering of a more passionate

and less disciplined temper; and, above all, there was the incessant

struggle between pride and love--the same fearful strife which, we are

told, once made war in Heaven.

Sometimes he thought that Emily might be ill; but then that did not seem

likely, as her health was generally good; and she was, when she had last

written, perfectly well, and apparently in excellent spirits. Should he

write to her again? No, she owed him a letter, and if she loved him,

would doubtless answer it as soon as circumstances would permit; and he

'would let that haughty old aristocrat, her father, see that Philip

Hayforth, the merchant, had more of the spirit of a man in him than to

cringe to the proudest blood in England. And as for Emily, she was his

betrothed bride--the same as his wife; and if he was not more to her

than any father on earth, she was unworthy of the love he had given her.

Let her only be true to him, and he was ready to devote his life to

her--to die for her.' As the time wore slowly away, he became more and

more exasperated, fevered, wretched. Sometimes it seemed to him that he

could no longer endure such torment; that life itself was a burthen too

intolerable to be borne. But here pride came to the aid of a better

principle. His cheek tinged at the thought of being spoken of as the

slighted lover, and his blood boiled at the bare idea of Colonel

Sherwood's contemptuous pity for the vain plebeian who had dared to

raise his thoughts to an alliance with his beautiful, high-born

daughter. He 'would show the world that he was no love-sick, despairing

swain; and Miss Sherwood's vanity should never be gratified by the

display of the wounds her falsehood had inflicted. He would very soon,

he knew, forget the fair coquette who had trampled thus upon his most

sacred feelings.' So he tried to persuade himself, but his heart misgave

him. No: he could not forget her--it was in vain to attempt it; but the

more his feelings acknowledged her power, even the more the pride she

had wounded in its tenderest point rose up in wrath against her; and he

chafed at his own powerlessness to testify towards her his scorn and

contempt. At such times as these he seemed even to himself on the verge

of madness. But he had saner moments--moments when his better nature

triumphed, and pride resigned for a brief space her stormy empire to the

benigner sway of the contending passion.

In the midst of those terrific tornados, which in the West Indies and

elsewhere carry in their path, over immense districts, ruin and

desolation, there is a pause, often of considerable duration, caused,

the scientific inform us, by the calm in the centre of the atmospheric

vortex of which they are composed. Such a calm would occasionally rest

upon the mind of Philip Hayforth, over the length and breadth of which

the whirlwind of passion had lately been tearing. One night, after one

of those hidden transports, which the proud man would have died rather

than any mortal eye should have scanned, he threw himself upon his bed

(for he rarely _went to bed_ now, in the accepted sense of the phrase)

in a state approaching exhaustion, mental and bodily. By degrees a sort

of dream-like peace fell upon his spirit; the present vanished away, and

the past became, as it were, once more a living reality. He thought of

Emily Sherwood as he had first seen her--a vision of loveliness and

grace. He thought of her as he had beheld her almost the last time on

that clear summer morning, and like refreshing dew on his scorched and

desolated heart fell the remembrance of her gentle words and loving

looks. Could they have deceived? Ah no! and his whole nature seemed

suddenly softened. He seemed to see her before him now, with her angel

face and her floating white robes; he seemed even yet to be looking into

those soft, bright eyes, and to read there again, as he had read before,

love unspeakable, truth unchangeable. His heart was filled with a

yearning tenderness, an intense and longing fondness, and he extended

his arms, as if to embrace that white-robed image of truth and

gentleness: but she was not there; it was but her spirit which had come

to still his angry passions with the calm of trust and love. And in the

fond superstition that so it was, he sprang from his couch, seized a

pen, and wrote to her a passionate, incoherent epistle, telling her that

she had tried him almost beyond his strength, but that he loved and

believed in her still, and if she answered immediately, that he was

ready to forgive her for all the pain she had caused him. This letter

finished, he threw himself upon his bed once again, and after a space,

slept more soundly than he had done for many a long night before. When

he rose in the morning he read over his letter, and felt, as he read,

some faint misgivings; but these were put to flight by the recollection

of Emily, as she had appeared to him in the vision of the previous

night. As the post, however, did not go out till evening, he would keep

the letter till then. Alas for the delay! It changed for ever his own

fate and that of Emily Sherwood. It chanced that very afternoon that,

taking up a provincial newspaper in a coffee-room into which he had

strolled, on his way to the post-office, the following paragraph met his

eye:--'We understand that there is a matrimonial alliance in

contemplation between J---- R----, Esq., eldest son of Sir J---- R----,

Bart., and the lovely and accomplished Miss Sherwood, daughter of

Colonel Sherwood, late of the --th dragoons, and granddaughter of the

late R. Sherwood, Esq., of ---- Park.' On reading this most unfounded

rumor, Philip Hayforth waited not another moment, but rushed home as if

driven by the furies; and tearing his letter in a thousand pieces, threw

it and the purse, Emily's gift, into the fire, and vowed to bestow not

another thought on the heartless woman who had perjured her own faith

and sold his true and fervent love for riches and title. Oh how he

scorned her! how he felt in his own true heart that all the wealth and

grandeur of the earth would have been powerless to tempt one thought of

his from her!

To conceal all suspicion of his sufferings from the world, and, if

possible, banish their remembrance from his own mind, he now went even

more than formerly into society; and when there, simulated a gayety of

manner that had hitherto distinguished his most vivacious moments. He

had always been a general favorite, and now his company was more sought

after than ever. Among the young persons of the opposite sex with whom

his engagements most frequently brought him in contact, was a young girl

of the name of Fanny Hartley, pretty, gentle, excessively amiable, but

without much mind, and with no literary taste whatever. She had nothing

to say, but she listened to him, and he felt in her society a sort of

repose, which was at present peculiarly grateful to his angry, troubled

spirit. Her very silence soothed him, while the absorbing nature of his

own feelings prevented him at first from thinking of hers. Philip

Hayforth had certainly not more than an average share of human vanity,

but he did at last suspect, partly from an accidental circumstance which

had first drawn his attention to the subject, that he had created in the

heart of the innocent Fanny a deeper interest than he had ever intended.

He was touched, grateful, but at first grieved, for _he_ "could never

love again." But the charm of being loved soon began to work: his heart

was less desolate, his feelings were less bitter, when he thought of

Fanny Hartley, and began to ask himself if he were wise to reject the

consolation which Providence seemed to offer him in the affection of

this amiable and artless young creature. And when he thought of the pain

she might perchance be suffering on his account, all hesitation upon the

subject was removed at once. If she loved him, as he believed, his

conduct, it seemed to his really kind heart, had already been barbarous.

He ought not to delay another day. And accordingly that very evening he

offered his hand to Fanny Hartley, and was accepted with trembling joy.