Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Vol. LVI.

If the past increase and present amount of crime in the British islands be alone considered, it must afford grounds for the most melancholy forebodings. When we recollect that since the year 1805, that is, during a period of less than forty years, in the course of which population has advanced about sixty-five per cent in Great Britain and Ireland, crime in England has increased seven hundred per cent, in Ireland about eight hundred per cent, and in Scotland above three thousand six hundred per cent;¹ it is difficult to say what is destined to be the ultimate fate of a country in which the progress of wickedness is so much more rapid than the increase of the numbers of the people. Nor is the alarming nature of the prospect diminished by the reflection, that this astonishing increase in human depravity has taken place during a period of unexampled prosperity and unprecedented progress, during which the produce of the national industry had tripled, and the labours of the husbandman kept pace with the vast increase in the population they were to feed—in which the British empire carried its victorious arms into every quarter of the globe, and colonies sprang up on all sides with unheard-of rapidity—in which a hundred thousand emigrants came ultimately to migrate every year from the parent state into the new regions conquered by its arms, or discovered by its adventure. If this is the progress of crime during the days of its prosperity, what is it likely to become in those of its decline, when this prodigious vent for superfluous numbers has come to be in a great measure closed, and this unheard-of wealth and prosperity has ceased to gladden the land?

To discover to what causes this extraordinary increase of crime is to be ascribed, we must first examine the localities in which it has principally arisen, and endeavour to ascertain whether it is to be found chiefly in the agricultural, pastoral, or manufacturing districts. We must then consider the condition of the labouring classes, and the means provided to restrain them in the quarters where the progress of crime has been most alarming; and inquire whether the existing evils are insurmountable and unavoidable, or have arisen from the supineness, the errors, and the selfishness of man. The inquiry is one of the most interesting which can occupy the thoughts of the far-seeing and humane; for it involves the temporal and eternal welfare of millions of their fellow-creatures;—it may well arrest the attention of the selfish, and divert for a few minutes the profligate from their pursuits; for on it depends whether the darling wealth of the former is to be preserved or destroyed, and the exciting enjoyments of the other arrested or suffered to continue.

To elucidate the first of these questions, we subjoin a table, compiled 002from the Parliamentary returns, exhibiting the progress of serious crime in the principal counties, agricultural pastoral, and manufacturing, of the empire, during the last fifteen years. We are unwilling to load our pages with figures, and are well aware how distasteful they are to a large class of readers; and if those results were as familiar to others as they are to ourselves, we should be too happy to take them for granted, as they do first principles in the House of Commons, and proceed at once to the means of remedy. But the facts on this subject have been so often misrepresented by party or prejudice, and are in themselves so generally unknown, that it is indispensable to lay a foundation in authentic information before proceeding further in the inquiry. The greatest difficulty which those practically acquainted with the subject experience in such an investigation, is to make people believe their statements, even when founded on the most extensive practical knowledge, or the more accurate statistical inquiry. There is such a prodigious difference between the condition of mankind and the progress of corruption in the agricultural or pastoral, and manufacturing or densely peopled districts, that those accustomed to the former will not believe any statements made regarding the latter. They say they are incredible or exaggerated; that the persons who make them are têtes montées; that their ideas are very vague, and their suggestions utterly unworthy the consideration either of men of sense or of government. With such deplorable illusions does ignorance repel the suggestions of knowledge; theory, of experience; selfishness, of philanthropy; cowardice, of resolution. Thus nothing whatever is done to remedy or avert the existing evils: the districts not endangered unite as one man to resist any attempt to form a general system for the alleviation of misery or diminution of crime in those that are, and the preponderance of the unendangered districts in the legislature gives them the means of effectually doing so. The evils in the endangered districts are such, that it is universally felt they are beyond the reach of local remedy or alleviation. Thus, between the two, nothing whatever is done to arrest, or guard against, the existing or impending evils. Meanwhile, destitution, profligacy, sensuality, and crime, advance with unheard-of rapidity in the manufacturing districts, and the dangerous classes there massed together combine every three or four years in some general strike or alarming insurrection, which, while it lasts, excites universal terror, and is succeeded, when suppressed, by the same deplorable system of supineness, selfishness, and infatuation.

Names of Counties.	Population in 1841.	Commitments for serious crime in 1841.	Proportion of committments to population.
Cumberland,	178,038	151	1 in 1,194
Derby,	272,217	277	1 in 964
Anglesey,	50,891	13	1 in 3,900
Carnarvon,	81,093	33	1 in 2,452
Inverness-shire,	97,799	106	1 in 915
Selkirkshire,	7,990	4	1 in 1,990
Argyleshire,	97,371	96	1 in 1,010
Total,	785,399	680	1 in 1,155

Names of Counties.	Population in 1841.	Commitments for serious crime in 1841.	Proportion of committments to population.
Shropshire,	239,048	416	1 in 574
Kent,	548,337	962	1 in 569
Norfolk,	412,664	666	1 in 518
Essex,	344,979	647	1 in 533
Northumberland,	250,278	226	1 in 1,106
East Lothian,	35,886	38	1 in 994
Perthshire,	137,390	116	1 in 1,181
Aberdeenshire,	192,387	92	1 in 2,086
Total,	2,160,969	3,163	1 in 682

Names of Counties.	Population in 1841.	Commitments for serious crime in 1841.	Proportion of committments to population.
Middlesex,	1,576,636	3,586	1 in 439
Lancashire,	1,667,054	3,987	1 in 418
Staffordshire,	510,504	1,059	1 in 482
Yorkshire,	1,591,480	1,895	1 in 839
Glamorganshire,	171,188	189	1 in 909
Lanarkshire,	426,972	513	1 in 832
Renfrewshire,	155,072	505	1 in 306
Forfarshire,	170,520	333	1 in 512
Total,	6,269,426	12,067	1 in 476

The table in the note exhibits the number of commitments for serious offences, with the population of each, of eight counties—pastoral, agricultural, and manufacturing—in Great Britain during the year 1841². We take the returns for that year, both because it was the year in which the census was taken, and because the succeeding year, 1842, being the year of the great outbreak in England, and violent strike in Scotland, the figures, both in 003that and the succeeding year, may be supposed to exhibit a more unfavourable result for the manufacturing districts than a fair average of years. From this table, it appears that the vast preponderance of crime is to be found in the manufacturing or densely-peopled districts, and that the proportion per cent of commitments which they exhibit, as compared with the population, is generally three, often five times, what appears in the purely agricultural and pastoral districts. The comparative criminality of the agricultural, manufacturing, and pastoral districts is not to be considered as accurately measured by these returns, because so many of the agricultural counties, especially in England, are overspread with towns and manufactories or collieries. Thus Kent and Shropshire are justly classed with agricultural counties, though part of the former is in fact a suburb of London, and of the latter overspread with demoralizing coal mines. The entire want of any police force in some of the greatest manufacturing counties, as Lanarkshire, by permitting nineteen-twentieths of the crime to go unpunished, exhibits a far less amount of criminality than would be brought to light under a more vigilant system. But still there is enough in this table to attract serious and instructive attention. It appears that the average of seven pastoral counties exhibits an average of 1 commitment for serious offences out of 1155 souls: of eight counties, partly agricultural and partly manufacturing, of 1 in 682: and of eight manufacturing and mining, of 1 in 476! And the difference between individual counties is still more remarkable, especially when counties purely agricultural or pastoral can be compared with those for the most part manufacturing or mining. Thus the proportion of commitment for serious crime in the pastoral counties of

Further, the statistical returns of crime demonstrate, not only that such is the present state of crime in the densely peopled and manufacturing districts, compared to what obtains in the agricultural or pastoral, but that the tendency of matters is still worse;⁴ and that, great as has been 005the increase of population during the last thirty years in the manufacturing and densely peopled districts, the progress of crime has been still greater and more alarming. From the instructive and curious tables below, constructed from the criminal returns given in Porter's Parliamentary Tables, and the returns of the census taken in 1821, 1831, and 1841, it appears, that while in some of the purely pastoral counties, such as Selkirk and Anglesey, crime has remained during the last twenty years nearly stationary, and in some of the purely agricultural, such as Perth and Aberdeen, it has considerably diminished, in the agricultural and mining or manufacturing, such as Shropshire and Kent, it has doubled during the same period: and in the manufacturing and mining districts, such as Lancashire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire, and Renfrewshire, more than tripled in the same time. It appears, from the same authentic sources of information, that the progress of crime during the last twenty years has been much more rapid in the manufacturing and densely peopled than in the simply densely peopled districts; for in Middlesex, during the last twenty years, population has advanced about fifty per cent, and serious crime has increased in nearly the same proportion, having swelled from 2480 to 3514: whereas in Lancashire, during the same period, population has advanced also fifty per cent, but serious crime has considerably more than doubled, having risen from 1716 to 3987.

Here, then, we are at length on firm ground in point of fact. Several writers of the liberal school who had a partiality for manufactures, because their chief political supporters were to be found among that class of society, have laboured hard to show that manufactures are noways detrimental either to health or morals; and that the mortality and crime of the manufacturing counties were in no respect greater than those of the pastoral or agricultural districts. The common sense of mankind has uniformly revolted against this absurdity, so completely contrary to what experience every where tells in a language not to be misunderstood; but it has now been completely disproved by the Parliamentary returns. The criminal statistics have exposed this fallacy as completely, in reference to the different degrees of depravity in different parts of the empire, as the registrar-general's returns have, in regard to the different degrees of salubrity in employments, and mortality in rural districts and manufacturing places. It now distinctly appears that crime is greatly more prevalent in proportion to the numbers of the people in densely peopled than thinly inhabited localities, and that it is making far more rapid progress in the former situation than the latter. Statistics are not to be despised when they thus, at once and decisively, disprove errors so assiduously spread, maintained by writers of such respectability, and supported by such large and powerful bodies in the state.

	1821.	1831.	1841.
	Pop.	Com.	Pop.	Com.	Pop.	Com.
Cumberland,	156,124	66	169,681	74	178,038	151
Derby,	213,333	105	237,070	202	272,217	277
Anglesey,	43,325	10	48,325	8	50,891	13
Carnarvon,	57,358	12	66,448	36	81,893	33
Inverness,	90,157	...	94,797	35	97,799	106
Selkirk,	6,637	...	6,833	2	7,990	4
Argyle,	97,316	...	100,973	41	97,321	96

	1821.	1831.	1841.
	Pop.	Com.	Pop.	Com.	Pop.	Com.
Shropshire,	266,153	159	222,938	228	239,048	416
Kent,	426,916	492	479,155	640	548,337	962
Norfolk,	344,368	356	390,054	549	412,664	666
Essex,	289,424	303	317,507	607	344,979	647
Northumberland,	198,965	70	222,912	108	250,278	226
East Lothian,	35,127	...	36,145	23	35,886	38
Perthshire,	139,050	...	142,894	140	137,390	116
Aberdeenshire,	155,387	...	177,657	161	192,387	92

	1821.	1831.	1841.
	Pop.	Com.	Pop.	Com.	Pop.	Com.
Middlesex,	1,144,531	2,480	1,358,330	3,514	1,576,636	3,586
Lancashire,	1,052,859	1,716	1,336,854	2,352	1,667,054	3,987
Staffordshire,	345,895	374	410,512	644	510,504	1,059
Yorkshire,	801,274	757	976,350	1,270	1,154,111	1,895
Glamorgan,	101,737	28	126,612	132	171,188	189
Lanark,	244,387	...	316,849	470	426,972	513
Renfrew,	112,175	...	133,443	205	155,072	505
Forfar,	113,430	...	139,666	124	l70,520	333

Nor can it be urged with the slightest degree of foundation, that this superior criminality of the manufacturing and densely peopled districts is owing to a police force being more generally established than in the agricultural or pastoral, and thus crime being more thoroughly detected in the former situation than the latter. For, in the first place, in several of the greatest manufacturing counties, particularly Lanarkshire in Scotland, there is no police at all; and the criminal establishment is just what it was forty years ago. In the next place, a police force is the consequence of a previous vast accumulation or crime, and is never established till the risk to life and insecurity to property had rendered it unbearable. Being always established by the voluntary assessment of the inhabitants, nothing can be more certain than that it never can be called into existence but by such an increase of crime as has rendered it a matter of necessity.

We are far, however, from having approached the whole truth, if we have merely ascertained, upon authentic evidence, that crime is greatly more prevalent in the manufacturing than the rural districts. That will probably be generally conceded; and the preceding details have been given merely to show the extent of the difference, and the rapid steps which it is taking. It is more material to inquire what are the causes of this superior profligacy 006of manufacturing to rural districts; and whether it arises unavoidably from the nature of their respective employments, or is in some degree within the reach of human amendment or prevention.

It is usual for persons who are not practically acquainted with the subject, to represent manufacturing occupations as necessarily and inevitably hurtful to the human mind. The crowding together, it is said, young persons, of different sexes and in great numbers, in the hot atmosphere and damp occupations of factories or mines, is necessarily destructive to morality, and ruinous to regularity of habit. The passions are excited by proximity of situation or indecent exposure; infant labour early emancipates the young from parental control; domestic subordination, the true foundation for social virtue, is destroyed; the young exposed to temptation before they have acquired strength to resist it; and vice spreads the more extensively from the very magnitude of the establishments on which the manufacturing greatness of the country depends. Such views are generally entertained by writers on the social state of the country; and being implicitly adopted by the bulk of the community, the nation has abandoned itself to a sort of despair on the subject, and regarding manufacturing districts as the necessary and unavoidable hotbed of crimes, strives only to prevent the spreading of the contagion into the rural parts of the country.

There is certain degree of truth in these observations; but they are much exaggerated, and it is not in these causes that the principal sources of the profligacy of the manufacturing districts is to be found.

The real cause of the demoralization of manufacturing towns is to be found, not in the nature of the employment which the people there receive, so much as in the manner in which they are brought together, the unhappy prevalence of general strikes, and the prodigious multitudes who are cast down by the ordinary vicissitudes of life, or the profligacy of their parents, into a situation of want, wretchedness, and despair.

Consider how, during the last half century, the people have been brought together in the great manufacturing districts of England and Scotland. So rapid has been the progress of manufacturing industry during that period, that it has altogether out-stripped the powers of population in the districts where it was going forward, and occasioned a prodigious influx of persons from different and distant quarters, who have migrated from their paternal homes, and settled in the manufacturing districts, never to return.⁵ Authentic 007evidence proves, that not less than two millions of persons have, in this way, been transferred to the manufacturing counties of the north of England within the last forty years, chiefly from the agricultural counties of the south of that kingdom, or from Ireland. Not less than three hundred and fifty thousand persons have, during the same period, migrated into the two manufacturing counties of Lanark and Renfrew alone, in Scotland, chiefly from the Scotch Highlands, or north of Ireland. No such astonishing migration of the human species in so short a time, and to settle on so small a space, is on record in the whole annals of the world. It is unnecessary to say that the increase is to be ascribed chiefly, if not entirely, to immigration; for it is well known that such is the unhealthiness of manufacturing towns, especially to young children, that, so far from being able to add to their numbers, they are hardly ever able, without extraneous addition, to maintain them.

	1801	1821	1841	Increase in forty years.
Lancashire,	672,731	1,052,859	1,667,054	994,323
Yorkshire, W.R.,	565,282	801,274	1,154,101	588,819
Staffordshire,	233,153	343,895	510,504	277,351
Nottingham,	140,350	186,873	249,910	109,560
Warwick,	208,190	274,322	401,715	193,155
Gloucester,	250,809	335,843	431,383	180,574
	2,070,515	2,995,066	4,412,667	2,343,782

Lanark,	146,699	244,387	434,972	288,273
Renfrew,	78,056	112,175	155,072	77,016
	224,755	356,562	590,044	365,289

Various causes have combined to produce demoralization among the vast crowd, thus suddenly attracted, by the alluring prospect of high wages and steady employment, from the rural to the manufacturing districts. In the first place, they acquired wealth before they had learned how to use it, and that is, perhaps, the most general cause of the rapid degeneracy of mankind. High wages flowed in upon them before they had acquired the artificial wants in the gratification of which they could be innocently spent. Thence the general recourse to the grosser and sensual enjoyments, which are powerful alike on the savage and the sage. Men who, in the wilds of Ireland or the mountains of Scotland, were making three or four shillings a-week, or in Sussex ten, suddenly found themselves, as cotton-spinners, iron-moulders, colliers, or mechanics, in possession of from twenty to thirty shillings. Meanwhile, their habits and inclinations had undergone scarce any alteration; they had no taste for comfort in dress, lodging, or furniture; and as to laying by money, the thing, of course, was not for a moment thought of. Thus, this vast addition to their incomes was spent almost exclusively on eating and drinking. The extent to which gross sensual enjoyment was thus spread among these first settlers in the regions of commercial opulence, is incredible. It is an ascertained fact, that above a million a-year is annually spent in Glasgow on ardent spirits;⁶ and it has recently been asserted by a respectable and intelligent operative in Manchester, that, in that city, 750,000 more is annually spent on beer and spirits, than on the purchase of provisions. Is it surprising that a large part of the progeny of a generation which has embraced such habits, should be sunk in sensuality and profligacy, and afford a never-failing supply for the prisons and transport ships? It is the counterpart of the sudden corruption which invariably overtakes northern conquerors, when they settle in the regions of southern opulence.

Another powerful cause which promotes the corruption of men, when thus suddenly congregated together from different quarters in the manufacturing districts, is, that the restraints of character, relationship, and vicinity are, in a great measure, lost in the crowd. Every body knows what powerful influence public opinion, or the opinion of their relations, friends, and acquaintances, exercises on all men in their native seats, or when living for any length of time in one situation. It forms, in fact, next to religion, the most powerful restraint on vice, and excitement to virtue, that exists in the world. But when several hundred thousand of the working classes are suddenly huddled together in densely peopled localities, this invaluable check is wholly lost. Nay, what is worse, it is rolled over to the other side; and forms an additional incentive to licentiousness. The poor in these situations have no neighbours who care for them, or even know their names; but they are surrounded by multitudes who are willing to accompany them in the career of sensuality. They 008are unknown alike to each other, and to any persons of respectability or property in their vicinity. Philanthropy seeks in vain for virtue amidst thousands and tens of thousands of unknown names; charity itself is repelled by the hopelessness of all attempts to relieve the stupendous mass of destitution which follows in the train of such enormous accumulation of numbers. Every individual or voluntary effort is overlooked amidst the prodigious multitude, as it was in the Moscow campaign of Napoleon. Thus the most powerful restraints on human conduct—character, relations, neighbourhood—are lost upon mankind at the very time when their salutary influence is most required to enable them to withstand the increasing temptations arising from density of numbers and a vast increase of wages. Multitudes remove responsibility without weakening passion. Isolation ensures concealment without adding to resolution. This is the true cause of the more rapid deterioration of the character of the poor than the rich, when placed in such dense localities. The latter have a neighbourhood to watch them, because their station renders them conspicuous—the former have none. Witness the rapid and general corruption of the higher ranks, when they get away from such restraint, amidst the profligacy of New South Wales.

In the foremost rank of the causes which demoralize the urban and mining population, we must place the frequency of those strikes which unhappily have now become so common as to be of more frequent occurrence than a wet season, even in our humid climate. During the last twenty years there have been six great strikes: viz. in 1826, 1828, 1834, 1837, 1842, and 1844. All of these have kept multitudes of the labouring poor idle for months together. Incalculable is the demoralization thus produced upon the great mass of the working classes. We speak not of the actual increase of commitments during the continuance of a great strike, though that increase is so considerable that it in general augments them in a single year from thirty to fifty per cent.⁷ We allude to the far more general and lasting causes of demoralization which arise from the arraying of one portion of the community in fierce hostility against another, the wretchedness which is spread among multitudes by months of compulsory idleness, and the not less ruinous effect of depriving them of occupation during such protracted periods. When we recollect that such is the vehemence of party feeling produced by these disastrous combinations, that it so far obliterates all sense of right and wrong as generally to make their members countenance contumely and insult, sometimes even robbery, fire-raising, and murder, committed on innocent persons who are only striving to earn an honest livelihood for themselves by hard labour, but in opposition to the strike; and that it induces twenty and thirty thousand persons to yield implicit obedience to the commands of an unknown committee, who have power to force them to do what the Sultan Mahmoud, or the Committee of Public Safety, never ventured to attempt—to abstain from labour, and endure want and starvation for months together, for an object of which they often in secret disapprove—it may be conceived how wide-spread and fatal is the confusion of moral principle, and habits of idleness and insubordination thus produced. Their effects invariably appear for a course of years afterwards, in the increased roll of criminal commitments, and the number of young persons of both sexes, who, loosened by these protracted periods 009of idleness, never afterwards regain habits of regularity and industry. Nor is the evil lessened by the blind infatuation with which it is uniformly regarded by the other classes of the community, and the obstinate resistance they make to all measures calculated to arrest the violence of these combinations, in consequence of the expense with which they would probably be attended—a supineness which, by leaving the coast constantly clear to the terrors of such associations, and promising impunity to their crimes, operates as a continual bounty on their recurrence.

	Lanarkshire.	Lancashire.	Staffordshire.	Yorkshire.
1836	451	2,265	686	1,252
1837⁸	565	2,809	909	1,376
1841	513	3,987	1,059	1,895
1842⁹	696	4,497	1,485	2,598

Infant labour, unhappily now so frequent in all kinds of factories, and the great prevalence of female workers, is another evil of a very serious kind in the manufacturing districts. We do not propose to enter into the question, recently so fiercely agitated in the legislature, as to the practicability of substituting a compulsory ten-hours' bill for the twelve hours' at present in operation. Anxious to avoid all topics on which there is a difference of opinion among able and patriotic men, we merely state this prevalence and precocity of juvenile labour in the manufacturing and mining districts as a fact which all must deplore, and which is attended with the most unhappy effects on the rising generation. The great majority, probably nine-tenths, of all the workers in cotton-mills or printfields, are females. We have heard much of the profligacy and licentiousness which pervade such establishments; but though that may be too true in some cases, it is far from being universal, or even general; and there are numerous instances of female virtue being as jealously guarded and effectually preserved in such establishments, as in the most secluded rural districts. The real evils—and they follow universally from such employment of juvenile females in great numbers in laborious but lucrative employment—are the emancipation of the young from parental control, the temptation held out to idleness in the parents from the possibility of living on their children, and the disqualifying the girls for performing all the domestic duties of wives and mothers in after life.

These evils are real, general, and of ruinous consequence. When children—from the age of nine or ten in some establishments, of thirteen or fourteen in all—are able to earn wages varying from 3s. 6d. to 6s. a-week, they soon become in practice independent of parental control. The strongest of all securities for filial obedience—a sense of dependence—is destroyed. The children assert the right of self-government, because they bear the burden of self-maintenance. Nature, in the ordinary case, has effectually guarded against this premature and fatal emancipation of the young, by the protracted period of weakness during childhood and adolescence, which precludes the possibility of serious labour being undertaken before the age when a certain degree of mental firmness has been acquired. But the steam-engine, amidst its other marvels, has entirely destroyed, within the sphere of its influence, this happy and necessary exemption of infancy from labour. Steam is the moving power; it exerts the strength; the human machine is required only to lift a web periodically, or damp a roller, or twirl a film round the finger, to which the hands of infancy are as adequate as those of mature age. Hence the general employment of children, and especially girls, in such employments. They are equally serviceable as men or women, and they are more docile, cheaper, and less given to strikes. But as these children earn their own subsistence, they soon become rebellious to parental authority, and exercise the freedom of middle life as soon as they feel its passions, and before they have acquired its self-control.

If the effect of such premature emancipation of the young is hurtful to them, it is, if possible, still more pernicious to their parents. Labour is generally irksome to man; it is seldom persevered in after the period of its necessity has passed. When parents find that, by sending three or four children out to the mills or into the mines, they can get eighteen or twenty shillings a-week without doing any thing themselves, they soon come to abridge the duration and cost of education, in order to accelerate the arrival of the happy period when they 010may live on their offspring, not their offspring on them. Thus the purest and best affections of the heart are obliterated on the very threshold of life. That best school of disinterestedness and virtue, the domestic hearth, where generosity and self-control are called forth in the parents, and gratitude and affection in the children, from the very circumstance of the dependence of the latter on the former, is destroyed. It is worse than destroyed, it is made the parent of wickedness: it exists, but it exists only to nourish the selfish and debasing passions. Children come to be looked on, not as objects of affection, but as instruments of gain; not as forming the first duty of life and calling forth its highest energies, but as affording the first means of relaxing from labour, and permitting a relapse into indolence and sensuality. The children are, practically speaking, sold for slaves, and—oh! unutterable horror!—the sellers are their own parents! Unbounded is the demoralization produced by this monstrous perversion of the first principles of nature. Thence it is that it is generally found, that all the beneficent provisions of the legislature for the protection of infant labour are so generally evaded, as to render it doubtful whether any law, how stringent soever, could protect them. The reason is apparent. The parents of the children are the chief violators of the law; for the sake of profit they send them out, the instant they can work, to the mills or the mines. Those whom nature has made their protectors, have become their oppressors. The thirst for idleness, intoxication, or sensuality, has turned the strongest of the generous, into the most malignant of the selfish passions.

The habits acquired by such precocious employment of young women, are not less destructive of their ultimate utility and respectability in life. Habituated from their earliest years to one undeviating mechanical employment, they acquire great skill in it, but grow up utterly ignorant of any thing else. We speak not of ignorance of reading or writing, but of ignorance in still more momentous particulars, with reference to their usefulness in life as wives and mothers. They can neither bake nor brew, wash nor iron, sew nor knit. The finest London lady is not more utterly inefficient than they are, for any other object but the one mechanical occupation to which they have been habituated. They can neither darn a stocking nor sew on a button. As to making porridge or washing a handkerchief, the thing is out of the question. Their food is cooked out of doors by persons who provide the lodging-houses in which they dwell—they are clothed from head to foot, like fine ladies, by milliners and dressmakers. This is not the result of fashion, caprice, or indolence, but of the entire concentration of their faculties, mental and corporeal, from their earliest years, in one limited mechanical object. They are unfit to be any man's wife—still more unfit to be any child's mother. We hear little of this from philanthropists or education-mongers; but it is, nevertheless, not the least, because the most generally diffused, evil connected with our manufacturing industry.

But by far the greatest cause of the mass of crime of the manufacturing and mining districts of the country, is to be found in the prodigious number of persons, especially in infancy, who are reduced to a state of destitution, and precipitated into the very lowest stations of life, in consequence of the numerous ills to which all flesh—but especially all flesh in manufacturing communities—is heir. Our limits preclude the possibility of entering into all the branches of this immense subject; we shall content ourselves, therefore, with referring to one, which seems of itself perfectly sufficient to explain the increase of crime, which at first sight appears so alarming. This is the immense proportion of destitute widows with families, who in such circumstances find themselves immovably fixed in places where they can neither bring up their children decently, nor get away to other and less peopled localities.

From the admirable statistical returns of the condition of the labouring poor in France, prepared for the Bureau de l'Intérieure, it appears that the number of widows in that country amounts to the enormous number of 0111,738,000.¹⁰ This, out of a population now of about 34,000,000, is as nearly as possible one in twenty of the entire population! Population is advancing much more rapidly in Great Britain than France; for in the former country it is doubling in about 60 years, in the latter in 106. It is certain, therefore, that the proportion of widows must be greater in this country than in France, especially in the manufacturing districts, where early marriages, from the ready employment for young children, are so frequent; and early deaths, from the unhealthiness of employment or contagious disorders, are so common. But call the proportion the same: let it be taken at a twentieth part of the existing population. At this rate, the two millions of strangers who, during the last forty years, have been thrown into the four northern counties of Lancaster, York, Stafford, and Warwick, must contain at this moment a hundred thousand widows. The usual average of a family is two and a half children—call it two only. There will thus be found to be 200,000 children belonging to these 100,000 widows. It is hardly necessary to say, that the great majority, probably four-fifths of this immense body, must be in a state of destitution. We know in what state the fatherless and widows are in their affliction, and who has commanded us to visit them. On the most moderate calculation, 250,000, or an eighth of the whole population, must be in a state of poverty and privation. And in Scotland, where, during the same period of forty years, 350,000 strangers have been suddenly huddled together on the banks of the Clyde, the proportion may be presumed to be the same; or, in other words, thirty thousand widows and orphans are constantly there in a state deserving of pity, and requiring support, hardly any of whom receive more from the parish funds than a shilling a-week, even for the maintenance of a whole family.

The proportion of widows and orphans to the entire population, though without doubt in some degree aggravated by the early marriages and unhealthy employments incident to manufacturing districts, may be supposed to be not materially different in one age, or part of the country, from another. The widow and the orphan, as well as the poor, will be always with us; but the peculiar circumstance which renders their condition so deplorable in the dense and suddenly peopled manufacturing districts is, that the poor have been brought together in such prodigious numbers that all the ordinary means of providing for the relief of such casualties fails; while the causes of mortality among them are periodically so fearful, as to produce a vast and sudden increase of the most destitute classes altogether outstripping all possible means of local or voluntary relief. During the late typhus fever in Glasgow, in the years 1836 and 1837, above 30,000 of the poor took the epidemic, of whom 3300 died.¹¹ In the first eight months of 1843 alone, 32,000 persons in Glasgow were seized with fever.¹² Out of 1000 families, at a subsequent period, visited by the police, in conjunction with the visitors for the distribution of the great fund raised by subscription in 1841, 680 were found to be widows, who, with their families, amounted to above 2000 persons all in the most abject state of wretchedness and want.¹³ On so vast a scale do the causes of human destruction 012and demoralization act, when men are torn up from their native seats by the irresistible magnet of commercial wealth, and congregated together in masses, resembling rather the armies of Timour and Napoleon than any thing else ever witnessed in the transactions of men.

Here, then, is the great source of demoralization, destitution, and crime in the manufacturing districts. It arises from the sudden congregation of human beings in such fearful multitudes together, that all the usual alleviations of human suffering, or modes of providing for human indigence, entirely fail. We wonder at the rapid increase of crime in the manufacturing districts, forgetting that a squalid mass of two or three hundred thousand human beings are constantly precipitated to the bottom of society in a few counties, in such circumstances of destitution that recklessness and crime arise naturally, it may almost be said unavoidably, amongst them. And it is in the midst of such gigantic causes of evil—of causes arising from the extraordinary and unparalleled influx of mankind into the manufacturing districts during the last forty years, which can bear a comparison to nothing but the collection of the host with which Napoleon invaded Russia, or Timour and Genghis Khan desolated Asia—that we are gravely told that it is to be arrested by education and moral training; by infant schools and shortened hours of labour; by multiplication of ministers and solitary imprisonment! All these are very good things; each in its way is calculated to do a certain amount of good; and their united action upon the whole will doubtless, in process of time, produce some impression upon the aspect of society, even in the densely peopled manufacturing districts. As to their producing any immediate effect, or in any sensible degree arresting the prodigious amount of misery, destitution, and crime which pervades them, you might as well have tried, by the schoolmaster, to arrest the horrors of the Moscow retreat.

	Fever patients.	Died.
1836,	10,092	1187
1837,	21,800	2180
	31,892	3367

That the causes which have now been mentioned are the true sources of the rapid progress of crime and general demoralization of our manufacturing and mining districts, must be evident to all from this circumstance, well known to all who are practically conversant with the subject, but to a great degree unattended to by the majority of men, and that is,—that the prodigious stream of depravity and corruption which prevails, is far from being equally and generally diffused through society, even in the densely peopled districts where it is most alarming, but is in a great degree confined to the very lowest class. It is from that lowest class that nine-tenths of the crime, and nearly all the professional crime, which is felt as so great an evil in society, flows. Doubtless in all classes there are some wicked, many selfish and inhumane men; and a beneficent Deity, in the final allotment of rewards and punishments, will take largely into account both the opportunities of doing well which the better classes have abused, and the almost invincible causes which so often chain, as it were, the destitute to recklessness and crime. But still, in examining the classes of society on which the greater part of the crime comes, it will be found that at least three-fourths, probably nine-tenths, comes from the very lowest and the most destitute. It is incorrect to say crime is common among them; in truth, among the young at least, a tendency to it is there all but universal. If we examine who it is that compose this dismal substratum, this hideous black band of society, we shall find that it is not made up of any one class more than another—not of factory workers more than labourers, carters, or miners—but is formed by an aggregate of the most unfortunate or improvident of all classes, who, variously struck down from better ways by disease, vice, or sensuality, are now of necessity huddled together by tens of thousands in the dens of poverty, and held by the firm bond of necessity in the precincts of contagion and crime. Society in such circumstances resembles the successive bands of which the imagination of Dante has framed the infernal regions, which contain one concentric circle of horrors and punishments within another, until, when you arrive at the bottom, you find one uniform mass of crime, blasphemy and suffering. 013 We are persuaded there is no person practically acquainted with the causes of immorality and crime in the manufacturing districts, who will not admit that these are the true ones; and that the others, about which so much is said by theorists and philanthropists, though not without influence, are nevertheless trifling in the balance. And what we particularly call the public attention to is this—Suppose all the remedies which theoretical writers or practical legislators have put forth and recommended, as singly adequate to remove the evils of the manufacturing classes, were to be in united operation, they would still leave these gigantic causes of evil untouched. Let Lord Ashley obtain from a reluctant legislature his ten-hours' bill, and Dr Chalmers have a clergyman established for every 700 inhabitants; let church extension be pushed till there is a chapel in every village, and education till there is a school in every street; let the separate system be universal in prisons, and every criminal be entirely secluded from vicious contamination; still the great fountains of evil will remain unclosed; still 300,000 widows and orphans will exist in a few counties of England amidst a newly collected and strange population, steeped in misery themselves, and of necessity breeding up their children in habits of destitution and depravity; still the poor will be deprived, from the suddenness of their collection, and the density of their numbers, of any effective control, either from private character or the opinion of neighbourhood; still individual passion will be inflamed, and individual responsibility lost amidst multitudes; still strikes will spread their compulsory idleness amidst tens of thousands, and periodically array the whole working classes under the banners of sedition, despotism, and murder; still precocious female labour will at once tempt parents into idleness in middle life, and disqualify children, in youth, for household or domestic duties. We wish well to the philanthropists: we are far from undervaluing either the importance or the utility of their labours; but as we have hitherto seen no diminution of crime whatever from their efforts, so we anticipate a very slow and almost imperceptible improvement in society from their exertions.

Strong, and in many respects just, pictures of the state of the working classes in the manufacturing districts, have been lately put forth, and the Perils of the Nation have, with reason, been thought to be seriously increased by them. Those writers, however, how observant and benevolent soever, give a partial, and in many respects fallacious view, of the general aspect of society. After reading their doleful accounts of the general wretchedness, profligacy, and licentiousness of the working classes, the stranger is astonished, on travelling through England, to behold green fields and smiling cottages on all sides; to see in every village signs of increasing comfort, in every town marks of augmented wealth, and the aspect of poverty almost banished from the land. Nay, what is still more gratifying, the returns of the sanatary condition of the whole population, though still exhibiting a painful difference between the health and chances of life in the rural and manufacturing districts, present unequivocal proof of a general amelioration of the chances of life, and, consequently, of the general wellbeing of the whole community.

How are these opposite statements and appearances to be reconciled? Both are true—the reconciliation is easy. The misery, recklessness, and vice exist chiefly in one class—the industry, sobriety, and comfort in another. Each observer tells truly what he sees in his own circle of attention; he does not tell what, nevertheless, exists, and exercises a powerful influence on society, of the good which exists in the other classes. If the evils detailed in Lord Ashley's speeches, and painted with so much force in the Perils of the Nation, were universal, or even general, society could not hold together for a week. But though these evils are great, sometimes overwhelming in particular districts, they are far from being general. Nothing effectual has yet been done to arrest them in the localities or communities where they arise; but they do not spread much beyond them. The person engaged in the 014factories are stated by Lord Ashley to be between four and five hundred thousand: the population of the British islands is above 27,000,000. It is in the steadiness, industry, and good conduct of a large proportion of this immense majority that the security is to be found. Observe that industrious and well-doing majority; you would suppose there is no danger:—observe the profligate and squalid minority; you would suppose there is no hope.

At present about 60,000 persons are annually committed, in the British islands, for serious offences¹⁴ worthy of deliberate trial, and above double that number for summary or police offences. A hundred and eighty thousand persons annually fall under the lash of the criminal law, and are committed for longer or shorter periods to places of confinement for punishment. The number is prodigious—it is frightful. Yet it is in all only about 1 in 120 of the population; and from the great number who are repeatedly committed during the same year, the individuals punished are not 1 in 200. Such as they are, it may safely be affirmed that four-fifths of this 180,000 comes out of two or three millions of the community. We are quite sure that 150,000 come from 3,000,000 of the lowest and most squalid of the empire, and not 30,000 from the remaining 24,000,000 who live in comparative comfort. This consideration is fitted both to encourage hope and awaken shame—hope, as showing from how small a class in society the greater part of the crime comes, and to how limited a sphere the remedies require to be applied; shame, as demonstrating how disgraceful has been the apathy, selfishness, and supineness in the other more numerous and better classes, around whom the evil has arisen, but who seldom interfere, except to RESIST all measures calculated for its removal.

It is to this subject—the ease with which the extraordinary and unprecedented increase of crime in the empire might be arrested by proper means and the total inefficiency of all the remedies hitherto attempted, from the want of practical knowledge on the part of those at the head of affairs, and an entirely false view of human nature in society generally, that we shall direct the attention of our readers in a future Number.

THE HEART OF THE BRUCE.

A BALLAD.

It was upon an April morn

While yet the frost lay hoar,

We heard Lord James's bugle-horn

Sound by the rocky shore.

Then down we went, a hundred knights,

All in our dark array,

And flung our armour in the ships

That rode within the bay.

We spoke not as the shore grew less,

But gazed in silence back,

Where the long billows swept away

The foam behind our track.

And aye the purple hues decay'd

Upon the fading hill,

And but one heart in all that ship

Was tranquil, cold, and still.

The good Earl Douglas walk'd the deck,

And oh, his brow was wan!

Unlike the flush it used to wear

When in the battle van.—

"Come hither, come hither, my trusty knight,

Sir Simon of the Lee;

There is a freit lies near my soul

I fain would tell to thee.

"Thou knowest the words King Robert spoke

Upon his dying day,

How he bade me take his noble heart

And carry it far away:

"And lay it in the holy soil

Where once the Saviour trod,

Since he might not bear the blessed Cross,

Nor strike one blow for God.

"Last night as in my bed I lay,

I dream'd a dreary dream:—

Methought I saw a Pilgrim stand

In the moonlight's quivering beam.

"His robe was of the azure dye,

Snow-white his scatter'd hairs,

And even such a cross he bore

As good Saint Andrew bears.

"'Why go ye forth, Lord James,' he said,

'With spear and belted brand?

Why do ye take its dearest pledge

From this our Scottish land?

016

"'The sultry breeze of Galilee

Creeps through its groves of palm,

The olives on the Holy Mount

Stand glittering in the calm.

"'But 'tis not there that Scotland's heart

Shall rest by God's decree,

Till the great angel calls the dead

To rise from earth and sea!

"'Lord James of Douglas, mark my rede

That heart shall pass once more

In fiery fight against the foe,

As it was wont of yore.

"'And it shall pass beneath the Cross,

And save King Robert's vow,

But other hands shall bear it back,

Not, James of Douglas, thou!'

"Now, by thy knightly faith, I pray,

Sir Simon of the Lee—

For truer friend had never man

Than thou hast been to me—

"If ne'er upon the Holy Land

'Tis mine in life to tread,

Bear thou to Scotland's kindly earth

The relics of her dead."

The tear was in Sir Simon's eye

As he wrung the warrior's hand—

"Betide me weal, betide me woe,

I'll hold by thy command.

"But if in battle front, Lord James,

'Tis ours once more to ride,

Nor force of man, nor craft of fiend,

Shall cleave me from thy side!"

And aye we sail'd, and aye we sail'd,

Across the weary sea,

Until one morn the coast of Spain

Rose grimly on our lee.

And as we rounded to the port,

Beneath the watch-tower's wall,

We heard the clash of the atabals,

And the trumpet's wavering call.

"Why sounds yon Eastern music here

So wantonly and long,

And whose the crowd of armed men

That round yon standard throng?'

"The Moors have come from Africa

To spoil and waste and slay,

And Pedro, King of Arragon,

Must fight with them to-day."

017

"Now shame it were," cried good Lord James,

"Shall never be said of me,

That I and mine have turn'd aside,

From the Cross in jeopardie!

"Have down, have down my merry men all—

Have down unto the plain;

We'll let the Scottish lion loose

Within the fields of Spain!"—

"Now welcome to me, noble lord,

Thou and thy stalwart power;

Dear is the sight of a Christian knight

Who comes in such an hour!

"Is it for bond or faith ye come,

Or yet for golden fee?

Or bring ye France's lilies here,

Or the flower of Burgundie?'

"God greet thee well, thou valiant King,

Thee and thy belted peers—

Sir James of Douglas am I call'd,

And these are Scottish spears.

"We do not fight for bond or plight,

Nor yet for golden fee;

But for the sake of our blessed Lord,

That died Upon the tree.

"We bring our great King Robert's heart

Across the weltering wave,

To lay it in the holy soil

Hard by the Saviour's grave.

"True pilgrims we, by land or sea,

Where danger bars the way;

And therefore are we here, Lord King,

To ride with thee this day!"

The King has bent his stately head,

And the tears were in his eyne—

"God's blessing on thee, noble knight,

For this brave thought of thine!

"I know thy name full well, Lord James,

And honour'd may I be,

That those who fought beside the Bruce

Should fight this day for me!

"Take thou the leading of the van,

And charge the Moors amain;

There is not such a lance as thine

In all the host of Spain!"

The Douglas turned towards us then,

Oh, but his glance was high!—

"There is not one of all my men

But is as bold as I.

018

"There is not one of all my knights

But bears as true a spear—

Then onwards! Scottish gentlemen,

And think—King Robert's here!"

The trumpets blew, the cross-bolts flew,

The arrows flash'd like flame,

As spur in side, and spear in rest,

Against the foe we came.

And many a bearded Saracen

Went down, both horse and man;

For through their ranks we rode like corn,

So furiously we ran!

But in behind our path they closed,

Though fain to let us through,

For they were forty thousand men,

And we were wondrous few.

We might not see a lance's length,

So dense was their array,

But the long fell sweep of the Scottish blade

Still held them hard at bay.

"Make in! make in!" Lord Douglas cried,

"Make in, my brethren dear!

Sir William of St Clair is down,

We may not leave him here!"

But thicker, thicker, grew the swarm,

And sharper shot the rain,

And the horses rear'd amid the press,

But they would not charge again.

"Now Jesu help thee," said Lord James,

"Thou kind and true St Clair!

An' if I may not bring thee off,

I'll die beside thee there!"

Then in his stirrups up he stood,

So lionlike and bold,

And held the precious heart aloft

All in its case of gold.

He flung it from him, far ahead,

And never spake he more,

But—"Pass thee first, thou dauntless heart,

As thou were wont of yore!"

The roar of fight rose fiercer yet,

And heavier still the stour,

Till the spears of Spain came shivering in

And swept away the Moor.

"Now praised be God, the day is won!

They fly o'er flood and fell—

Why dost thou draw the rein so hard,

Good knight, that fought so well?"

019

"Oh, ride ye on, Lord King!" he said,

"And leave the dead to me,

For I must keep the dreariest watch

That ever I shall dree!

"There lies beside his master's heart

The Douglas, stark and grim;

And woe is me I should be here,

Not side by side with him!

"The world grows cold, my arm is old,

And thin my lyart hair,

And all that I loved best on earth

Is stretch'd before me there.

"O Bothwell banks! that bloom so bright,

Beneath the sun of May,

The heaviest cloud that ever blew

Is bound for you this day.

"And, Scotland, thou may'st veil thy head

In sorrow and in pain;

The sorest stroke upon thy brow

Hath fallen this day in Spain!

"We'll bear them back into our ship,

We'll bear them o'er the sea,

And lay them in the hallow'd earth,

Within our own countrie.

"And be thou strong of heart, Lord King,

For this I tell thee sure,

The sod that drank the Douglas' blood

Shall never bear the Moor!"

The King he lighted from his horse,

He flung his brand away,

And took the Douglas by the hand,

So stately as he lay.

"God give thee rest, thou valiant soul,

That fought so well for Spain;

I'd rather half my land were gone,

So thou wert here again!"

We bore the good Lord James away,

And the priceless heart he bore,

And heavily we steer'd our ship

Towards the Scottish shore.

No welcome greeted our return,

Nor clang of martial tread,

But all were dumb and hush'd as death

Before the mighty dead.

We laid the Earl in Douglas Kirk,

The heart in fair Melrose;

And woful men were we that day—

God grant their souls repose!

W.E.A.

MEMORANDUMS OF A MONTH'S TOUR IN SICILY.

THE MUSEUM OF PALERMO.

The museum of Palermo is a small but very interesting collection of statues and other sculpture, gathered chiefly, they say, from the ancient temples of Sicily, with a few objects bestowed out of the superfluities of Pompeii. In the lower room are some good bas-reliefs, to which a story is attached. They were discovered fifteen years ago at Selinuntium by some young Englishmen, the reward of four months' labour. Our guide, who had been also theirs, had warned them not to stay after the month of June, when malaria begins. They did stay. All (four) took the fever; one died of it in Palermo, and the survivors were deprived by the government—that is, by the king—of the spoils for which they had suffered so much and worked so hard. No one is permitted to excavate without royal license; excavation is, like Domitian's fish, res fisci. Even Mr Fagan, who was consul at Palermo, having made some interesting underground discoveries, was deprived of them. We saw here a fine Esculapius, in countenance and expression exceedingly like the Ecce Homo of Leonardo da Vinci, with all that god-like compassion which the great painter had imparted without any sacrifice of dignity. He holds a poppy-head, which we do not recollect on his statue or gems, and the Epidaurian snake is at his side. Up-stairs we saw specimens of fruits from Pompeii, barley, beans, the carob pod, pine kernels, as well as bread, sponge, linen: and the sponge was obviously such, and so was the linen. A bronze Hercules treading on the back of a stag, which he has overtaken and subdued, is justly considered as one of the most perfect bronzes discovered at Pompeii. A head of our Saviour, by Corregio, is exquisite in conception, and such as none but a person long familiar with the physiognomy of suffering could have accomplished. These are exceptions rather than specimens. The pictures, in general, are poor in interest; and a long gallery of casts of the chef-d'oeuvres of antiquity possessed by the capitals of Italy, Germany, England, and France, looks oddly here, and shows the poverty of a country which had been to the predatory proconsuls of Rome an inexhaustible repertory of the highest treasures of art. A VERRES REDIVIVUS would now find little to carry off but toys made of amber, lava snuff-boxes, and WODEHOUSE'S MARSALA—one of which he certainly would not guess the age of, and the other of which he would not drink.

LUNATIC ASYLUM.

We saw nothing in this house or its arrangements to make us think it superior, or very different from others we had visited elsewhere. The making a lunatic asylum a show-place for strangers is to be censured; indeed, we heard Esquirol observe, that nothing was so bad as the admission of many persons to see the patients at all; for that, although some few were better for the visits of friends, it was injurious as a general rule to give even friends admittance, and that it ought to be left discretionary with the physician, when to admit, and whom. Cleanliness, good fare, a garden, and the suppression of all violence—these have become immutable canons for the conduct of such institutions, and fortunately demand little more than ordinary good feeling and intelligence in the superintendent. But we could not fail to observe a sad want of suitable inducement to occupation, which was apparent throughout this asylum. That not above one in ten could read, may perhaps be thought a light matter, for few can be the resources of insanity in books; yet we saw at Genoa a case where it had taken that turn, and as it is occupation to read, with how much profit it matters not. Not one woman in four, as usually occurs in insanity, could be induced 021to dress according to her sex; they figured away in men's coats and hats! The dining-room was hung with portraits of some merit, by one of the lunatics; and we noticed that every face, if indeed all are portraits, had some insanity in it. They have a dance every Sunday evening. What an exhibition it must be!

MISCELLANEA.

That the vegetation of Palermo excels that of Naples, partly depends on the superior intelligence of the agriculturist, and partly upon soil and climate: the fruits here are not only more advanced, but finer in quality. We left a very meagre dessert of cherries beginning to ripen at Naples; the very next day, a superabundance of very fine and mature ones were to be had on all the stalls of Palermo. This must be the result of industry and care in a great measure; for on leaving that city, after a séjour of three weeks, for Messina, Catania, and Syracuse, although summer was much further advanced, we relapsed into miserably meagre supplies of what we had eaten in perfection in the capital; yet Syracuse and Catania are much warmer than Palermo.

The vegetables here are of immense growth. The fennel root (and there is no better test of your whereabouts in Italy) is nearly twice as large as at Naples, and weighs, accordingly, nearly double. The cauliflowers are quite colossal; and they have a blue cabbage so big that your arms will scarcely embrace it. We question, however, whether this hypertrophy of fruit or vegetables improves their flavour; give us English vegetables—ay, and English fruit. Though Smyrna's fig is eaten throughout Europe, and Roman brocoli be without a rival; though the cherry and the Japan medlar flourish only at Palermo, and the cactus of Catania can be eaten nowhere else; what country town in England is not better off on the whole, if quality alone be considered? But we have one terrible drawback; for whom are these fruits of the earth produced? Our prices are enormous, and our supply scanty; could we forget this, and the artichoke, the asparagus, the peas and beans of London and Paris, are rarely elsewhere so fine. To our palates the gooseberry and the black currant are a sufficient indemnity to Britain for the grape, merely regarded as a fruit to eat. Pine-apples, those "illustrious foreigners," are so successfully petted at home, that they will scarcely condescend now to flourish out of England. Nectarines refuse to ripen, and apricots to have any taste elsewhere. Our pears and apples are better, and of more various excellence, than any in the world. And we really prefer our very figs, grown on a fine prebendal wall in the close of Winchester, or under Pococke's window in a canon's garden at chilly Oxford. Thus has the kitchen-garden refreshed our patriotism, and made us half ashamed of our long forgetfulness of home. But there are good things abroad too for poor men; the rich may live any where. An enormous salad, crisp, cold, white, and of delicious flavour, for a halfpenny; olive oil, for fourpence a pound, to dress it with; and wine for fourpence a gallon to make it disagree with you;¹⁵ fuel for almost nothing, and bread for little, are not small advantages to frugal housekeepers; but, when dispensed by a despotic government, where one must read those revolting words motu proprio at the head of every edict, let us go back to our carrots and potatoes, our Peels and our income-tax, our fogs and our frost. The country mouse came to a right conclusion, and did not like the fragments of the feast with the cat in the cupboard—

Give me again my hollow tree,

My crust of bread, and liberty."

Fish, though plentiful and various, is not fine in any part of the Mediterranean; and as to thunny, one surfeit would put it out of the bill of fare for life. On the whole, though at Palermo and Naples the pauper starves not in the streets, the gourmand would be sadly at a loss in his requisition 022of delicacies and variety. Inferior bread, at a penny a pound, is here considered palatable by the sprinkling over of the crust with a small rich seed (jugulena) which has a flavour like the almond; it is also strewn, like our caraway seeds in biscuits, into the paste, and is largely cultivated for that single use. The capsici, somewhat similar in flavour to the pea, are detached from the radicles of a plant with a flower strikingly like the potatoe, and is used for a similar purpose to the jugulena.

This island was the granary of Athens before it nourished Rome; and wheat appears to have been first raised in Europe on the plains of eastern Sicily. In Cicero's time it returned eightfold; and to this day one grain yields its eightfold of increase; which, however, is by a small fraction less than our own, as given by M'Culloch in his "Dictionary of Commerce." We plucked some siligo, or bearded wheat, near Palermo, the beard of which was eight inches long, the ear contained sixty grains, eight being also in this instance the average increase; how many grains, then, must perish in the ground!

In Palermo, English gunpowder is sold by British sailors at the high price of from five to seven shillings per English pound; the "Polvere nostrale" of the Sicilians only fetches 1s. 8d.; yet such is the superiority of English gunpowder, that every one who has a passion for popping at sparrows, and other Italian sports, (complimented by the title of La caccia,) prefers the dear article. When they have killed off all the robins, and there is not a twitter in the whole country, they go to the river side and shoot gudgeons.

The Palermo donkey is the most obliging animal that ever wore long ears, and will carry you cheerfully four or five miles an hour without whip or other encouragement. The oxen, no longer white or cream-coloured, as in Tuscany, were originally importations from Barbary, (to which country the Sicilians are likewise indebted for the mulberry and silk-worm.) Their colour is brown. They rival the Umbrian breed in the herculean symmetry of their form, and in the possession of horns of more than Umbrian dimensions, rising more perpendicularly over the forehead than in that ancient race. The lizards here are such beautiful creatures, that it is worth while to bring one away, and, to pervert a quotation, "UNIUS Dominum sese fecisse LACERTAE." Some are all green, some mottled like a mosaic floor, others green and black on the upper side, and orange-coloured or red underneath. Of snakes, there is a Coluber niger from four to five feet in length, with a shining coat, and an eye not pleasant to watch even through glass; yet the peasants here put them into their Phrygian bonnets, and handle them with as much sang-froid as one would a walking-stick.

The coarse earthen vessels, pitchers, urns, &c., used by the peasants, are of the most beautiful shapes, often that of the ancient amphora; and at every cottage door by the road-side you meet with this vestige of the ancient arts of the country.

The plague which visited Palermo in 1624 swept away 20,000 inhabitants; Messina, in 1743, lost 40,000. The cholera, in 1837, destroyed 69,253 persons. The present population of the whole island is 1,950,000; the female exceeds the male by about three per cent, which is contrary to the general rule. It is said that nearly one-half the children received into the foundling hospital of Palermo die within the first year.

Formerly the barons of Sicily were rich and independent, like our English gentlemen; but they say that, since 1812, the king's whole pleasure and business, as before our Magna Charta times, have been to lower their importance. In that year a revolt was the consequence of an income-tax even of two per cent, for they were yet unbroken to the yoke; but now that he has saddled property with a deduction, said to be eventually equal to fifteen per cent, if not more; now that he doubles the impost on the native sulphur, which is therefore checked in its sale; now that he keeps an army of 80,000 men to play at soldiers with; now that he constitutes himself the only referee even in questions of commercial expediency, and a fortiori in all other cases, which he settles arbitrarily, or does not settle at all; now that he sees so little the signs of the times, 023that he will not let a professor go to a science-congress at Florence or Bologna without an express permission, and so ignorant as to have refused that permission for fear of a political bias; now that he diverts a nation's wealth from works of charity or usefulness, to keep a set of foreigners in his pay—they no doubt here remember in their prayers, with becoming gratitude, "the holy alliance," or, as we would call it, the mutual insurance company of the kings of Europe, of which Castlereagh and Metternich were the honorary secretaries.

In the midst of all the gloomy despotism, beautiful even as imagination can paint it, is Palermo beautiful! One eminent advantage it possesses over Naples itself—its vicinity presents more "drives;" and all the drives here might contest the name given to one of them, which is called "Giro delle Grazie," (the Ring or Mall of the Graces.) It has a Marina of unrivaled beauty, to which the noblesse and the citizens repair and form a promenade of elegant equipages. A fine pavement for foot passengers is considerately raised three or four feet above the carriage road; so that the walking population have nothing to annoy them. The sea is immediately below both, and you see the little rock-encircled bays animated with groups of those sturdy fishermen with bare legs; which you admire in Claude and Salvator, throwing before them, with admirable precision, their épervier net, whose fine wrought meshes sometimes hang, veil-like, between you and the ruddy sunset, or plashing, as they fall nightly into the smooth sea, contribute the pleasure of an agreeable sound to the magic of the scenery. Some take the air on donkeys, which go at a great rate; some are mounted on Spanish mules, all mixed together freely amidst handsome and numerous equipages; and the whole is backed by a fine row of houses opposite the sea, built after the fashion of our terraces and crescents at watering-places. And finally, that blue æquor, as it now deserves to be termed, studded over with thunny boats and coasting craft with the haze latine sail, that we should be sorry to trust in British hands, is walled in by cliffs so bold, so rugged, and standing out so beautifully in relief, that for a moment we cannot choose but envy the citizen of Panormus. But we may not tarry even here; we have more things to see, and every day is getting hotter than the last.

JOURNEY TO SEGESTE.

Leaving Palermo early, we pass Monreale in our way to the Doric columns of Segeste, and find ourselves, before the heat of day has reached its greatest intensity, at a considerable elevation above the plain on which the capital stands, amidst mountains which, except in the difference of their vegetation, remind us not a little of the configuration of certain wild parts of the Highlands, where Ben Croachin flings his dark shadow across Loch Awe. Indeed, we were thinking of this old and favourite fishing haunt with much complacency, when two men suddenly came forth from behind the bristly aloes and the impenetrable cactus—ill-looking fellows were they; but, moved by the kindest intentions for our safety, they offer to conduct us through the remainder of the defile. This service our hired attendant from Palermo declined, and we push on unmolested to Partenico, our halting-place during the heat of the day. It is a town of some extent, large enough to afford two fountains of a certain pretension, but execrably dirty within. Twelve thousand inhabitants has Partenico, and five churches. Out of its five locandas, who shall declare the worst? Of that in which we had first taken refuge, (as, in a snow-storm on the Alps, any roof is Paradise,) we were obliged to quit the shelter, and walk at noon, at midsummer, and in Sicily, a good mile up a main street, which, beginning in habitations of the dimensions of our almshouses, ends in a few huts intolerably revolting, about which troops of naked children defy vermin, and encrust themselves in filth. At one door we could not help observing that worst form of scabies, the gale à grosses bulles; so we had got, it appeared, from Scylla into Charybdis, and were in the very preserves 024of Sicilian itch, and we prognosticate it will spread before the month expires wherever human skin is to be found for its entertainment. Partenico lies in a scorching plain full of malaria. Having passed the three stifling hours of the day here, we proceed on our journey to Alcamo, a town of considerable size, which looks remarkably well from the plain at the distance of four miles—an impression immediately removed on passing its high rampart gate. Glad to escape the miseries with which it threatens the détenu, we pass out at the other end, and zigzag down a hill of great beauty, and commanding such views of sea and land as it would be quite absurd to write about. Already a double row of aloë, planted at intervals, marks what is to be your course afar off, and is a faithful guide till it lands you in a Sicilian plain. This is the highest epithet with which any plain can be qualified. This is indeed the month for Sicily. The goddess of flowers now wears a morning dress of the newest spring fashion; beautifully made up is that dress, nor has she worn it long enough for it to be sullied ever so little, or to require the washing of a shower. A delicate pink and a rich red are the colours which prevail in the tasteful pattern of her voluminous drapery; and as she advances on you with a light and noiseless step, over a carpet which all the looms of Paris or of Persia could not imitate, scattering bouquets of colours the most happily contrasted, and impregnating the air with the most grateful fragrance, we at once acknowledge her beautiful impersonation in that "monument of Grecian art," the Farnese Flora, of which we have brought the fresh recollection from the museum of Naples.

The Erba Bianca is a plant like southernwood, presenting a curious hoar-frosted appearance as its leaves are stirred by the wind. The Rozzolo a vento is an ambitious plant, which grows beyond its strength, snaps short upon its overburdened stalk, and is borne away by any zephyr, however light. Large crops of oats are already cut; and oxen of the Barbary breed, brown and coal-black, are already dragging the simple aboriginal plough over the land. Some of these fine cattle (to whom we are strangers, as they are to us) stood gazing at us in the plain, their white horns glancing in the sun; others, recumbent and ruminating, exhibit antlers which, as we have said before, surpass the Umbrian cattle in their elk-like length and imposing majesty. Arrived at the bottom of our long hill, we pass a beautiful stream called Fiume freddo, whose source we track across the plain by banks crowned with Cactus and Tamarisk. Looking back with regret towards Alcamo, we see trains of mules, which still transact the internal commerce of the country, with large packsaddles on their backs; and when a halt takes place, these animals during their drivers' dinner obtain their own ready-found meal, and browse away on three courses of vegetables and a dessert.

SICILIAN INNS.

"A beautiful place this Segeste must be! One could undergo any thing to see it!" Such would be the probable exclamation of more than one reader looking over some landscape annual, embellished with perhaps a view of the celebrated temple and its surrounding scenery; but find yourself at any of the inexpressibly horrid inns of Alcamo or Calatafrini, (and these are the two principal stations between Palermo and Segeste—one with its 12,000, the other with its 18,000 inhabitants;) let us walk you down the main street of either, and if you don't wish yourself at Cheltenham, or some other unclassical place which never had a Latin name, we are much mistaken! The "Relievo dei Cavalli" at Alcamo offers no relief for you! The Magpie may prate on her sign-post about clean beds, for magpies can be made to say any thing; but pray do not construe the "Canova Divina" Divine Canova! He never executed any thing for the Red Lion of Calatafrini, whose "Canova" is a low wine-shop, full of wrangling Sicilian boors. Or will you place yourself under the Eagle's wing, seduced by its nuovi mobili e buon servizio? Oh, we obtest those 025broken window-panes whether it be not cruel to expose new furniture to such perils! For us we put up at the "Temple of Segeste," attracted rather by its name than by any promise or decoy it offers. Crabbe has given to the inns at Aldborough each its character: here all are equal in immundicity, and all equally without provisions. Some yellow beans lie soaking to soften them. There is salt-cod from the north, moist and putrid. There is no milk; eggs are few. The ham at the Pizzicarolo's is always bad, and the garlicked sausage repulsive. Nothing is painted or white-washed, let alone dusted, swept, or scoured. The walls have the appearance of having been pawed over by new relays of dirty fingers daily for ten years. This is a very peculiar appearance at many nasty places out of Sicily, and we really do not know its pathology. You tread loathingly an indescribable earthen floor, and your eye, on entering the apartment, is arrested by a nameless production of the fictile art, certainly not of Etruscan form, which is invariably placed on the bolster of the truck-bed destined presently for your devoted head. Oh! to do justice to a Sicilian locanda is plainly out of question, and the rest of our task may as well be sung as said, verse and prose being alike incapable of the hopeless reality:—

"Lodged for the night, O Muse! begin

To sing the true Sicilian inn,

Where the sad choice of six foul cells

The least exacting traveller quells

(Though crawling things, not yet in sight,

Are waiting for the shadowy night,

To issue forth when all is quiet,

And on your feverish pulses riot;)

Where one wood shutter scrapes the ground,

By crusts, stale-bones, and garbage bound;

Where unmolested spiders toil

Behind the mirror's mildew'd foil;

Where the cheap crucifix of lead

Hangs o'er the iron tressel'd bed;

Where the huge bolt will scarcely keep

Its promise to confiding sleep,

Till you have forced it to its goal

In the bored brick-work's crumbling hole;

Where, in loose flakes, the white-wash peeling

From the bare joints of rotten ceiling,

Give token sure of vermin's bower,

And swarms of bugs that bide their hour!

Though bands of fierce musquittos boom

Their threatening bugles round the room,

To bed! Ere wingless creatures crawl

Across your path from yonder wall,

And slipper'd feet unheeding tread

We know not what! To bed! to bed!

What can those horrid sounds portend?

Some waylaid traveller near his end,

From ghastly gash in mortal strife,

Or blow of bandit's blood-stained knife?

No! no! They're bawling to the Virgin,

Like victim under hands of surgeon!

From lamp-lit daub, proceeds the cry

Of that unearthly litany!

And now a train of mules goes by!

"One wretch comes whooping up the street

For whooping's sake! And now they beat

Drum after drum for market mass,

Each day's transactions on the place!

All things that go, or stay, or come,

They herald forth by tuck of drum.

Day dawns! a tinkling tuneless bell,

Whate'er it be, has news to tell.

Then twenty more begin to strike

In noisy discord, all alike;—

Convents and churches, chapels, shrines,

In quick succession break the lines.

Till every gong in town, at last

Its tongue hath loos'd, and sleep is past.

So much for nights! New days begin,

Which land you in another Inn.

O! he that means to see Girgenti

Or Syracuse!—needs patience plenty!"

Crossing a rustic bridge, we pass through a garden (for it is no less, though man has had no spade in it) of pinks, marigolds, cyclamens, and heart's-ease, &c. &c.; the moist meadow land below is a perfect jungle of lofty grasses, all fragrant and in flower, gemmed with the unevaporated morning dew, and colonized with the Aphides, Alticæ, and swarms of the most beautiful butterflies clinging to their stalks. Gramina læta after Virgil's own heart, were these. Their elegance and unusual variety were sufficient to throw a botanist into a perfect HAY fever, and our own first paroxysm only went off, when, after an hour's hard collecting, we came to a place which demanded another sort of enthusiasm; for THERE stood without a veil the Temple of Segeste, with 026one or two glimpses of which we had been already astonished at a distance, in all its Dorian majesty! This almost unmutilated and glorious memorial of past ages here reigns alone—the only building far or near visible in the whole horizon; and what a position has its architect secured! In the midst of hills on a bit of table-land, apparently made such by smoothing down the summit of one of them, with a greensward in front, and set off behind by a mountain background, stands this eternal monument of the noblest of arts amidst the finest dispositions of nature. There is another antiquity of the place also to be visited at Segeste—its theatre; but we are too immediately below it to know any thing about it at present, and must leave it in a parenthesis. To our left, at the distance of eight miles, this hill country of harmonious and graceful undulation ends in beetling cliffs, beneath which the sea, now full in view, lies sparkling in the morning sunshine. We shall never, never forget the impressions made upon us on first getting sight of Segeste! Pæstum we had seen, and thought that it exhausted all that was possible to a temple, or the site of a temple. Awe-stricken had we surveyed those monuments of "immemorial antiquity" in that baleful region of wild-eyed buffaloes and birds of prey—temples to death in the midst of his undisputed domains! We had fully adopted Forsyth's sentiment, and held Pæstum to be probably the most impressive monument on earth; but here at Segeste a nature less austere, and more RIANTE in its wildness, lent a quite different charm to a scene which could scarcely be represented by art, and for which a reader could certainly not be prepared by description. We gave an antiquarian's devoutest worship to this venerable survivor of 2000 years, and of many empires—we felt the vast masses of its time-tried Doric, and even the wild flowers within its precincts, its pink valerians; its erba di vento, its scented wallflower. The whole scene kept our admiration long tasked, but untired. A smart shower compelled us to seek shelter under the shoulder of one of the grey entablatures: it soon passed away, leaving us a legacy of the richest fragrance, while a number of wild birds of the hawk kind, called "chaoli" from their shrill note, issued from their hiding-places, and gave us wild music as they scudded by!

A few bits of wall scattered over the corn-fields are all that now remains of the dwellings of the men who built this temple for their city, and who, by its splendour, deluded the Athenians into a belief of greater wealth than they possessed.

Our ascent to the theatre, the day after, proved to be a very steep one, of half an hour on mule-back; in making which, we scared two of those prodigious birds, the ospreys, who, having reconnoitred us, forthwith began to wheel in larger and larger sweeps, and at last made off for the sea. We found the interior of the theatre occupied by an audience ready for our arrival; it consisted of innummerable hawks, the chaoli just mentioned, which began to scream at our intrusion. The ospreys soon returned, and were plainly only waiting our departure to subside upon their solitary domain. We would not be a soft-billed bird for something in this neighbourhood; no song would save them from the hawks' supper. Having luxuriated on the 24th of May for full four hours in this enchanting neighbourhood, we were sorry to return to our inn—and such an inn! We departed abruptly, and probably never to return; but we shall think of Segeste in Hyde Park, or as we pass the candlestick Corinthians of Whitehall. Thucydides¹⁶ relates that a prevailing notion in his time was, that the Trojans after losing Troy went first to Sicily, and founded there Egesta and Eryx. Now, as on the same authority the first Greek colony was Naxos, also in Sicily, Greeks and Trojans (strange coincidence!) must have met again on new ground after the Iliad was all acted and done with, like a tale that is told.

On our return towards Palermo, one of our party having a touch of ague, we crossed the street to the apothecary, (at Calatafrini, our night's halt,) and smelling about his musty galenicals, amidst a large supply of malvas which were drying on his counter, the only wholesome-looking thing amidst his stores, we asked if 027he had any quinine. "Sicuro!" and he presented us with a white powder having a slightly bitter taste, which, together with an ounce of green tea, to be dispensed in pinches of five grains on extraordinary occasions, comes, he says, from the East. On our observing that the quinine, if such at all, was adulterated, and that this was too bad in a country of malaria, where it was the poor man's only protection, he looked angry; but we rose in the esteem of peasants in the shop, who said to each other—"Ed ha ragione il Signor." Wanting a little soda, we were presented with sub-carbonate of potash as the nearest approach to it—a substitution which suggested to us a classical recollection from Theocritus; namely, that in this same Sicily, 2000 years ago, a Syracusan husband is rated by his dame for sending her soda for her washing in place of potash, the very converse of what our old drug-vender intended to have washed our inside withal.

The Roman Catholic religion patronises painting oddly here; not a cart but is adorned with some sacred subject. Every wretched vehicle that totters under an unmerciful load, with one poor donkey to draw six men, has its picture of Souls in Purgatory, who seem putting their hands and heads out of the flames, and vainly calling on the ruffians inside to stop. We read Viva la Divina Providenza, in flaming characters on the front board of a carriole, while the whip is goading the poor starved brute who drags it; for these barbarians in the rear of European civilization, plainly are of opinion that a cart with a sacred device shall not break down, though its owner commit every species of cruelty.

The next day found us again installed at our old quarters in Palermo, where, during our brief remaining stay, we visit a conchologist, before which event we had no notion that Sicily was so rich in shells. Two sides of a moderately large room are entirely devoted to his collection. Here we saw a piece of wood nearly destroyed by the Teredo navalis, or sailor's bore, who seems more active and industrious here than elsewhere, and seldom allows himself to be taken whole. Out of hundreds of specimens, three or four perfect ones were all that this collector could ever manage to extract, the molluscous wood-destroyer being very soft and fragile. His length is about three inches, his thickness that of a small quill; he lodges in a shell of extreme tenuity, and the secretion which he ejects is, it seems, the agent which destroys the wood, and pushes on bit by bit the winding tunnel. But his doings are nothing to the working of another wafer-shelled bivalve, whose tiny habitations are so thickly imbedded in the body of a nodule of flint as to render its exterior like a sieve, diducit scopulos aceto. What solvent can the chemist prepare in his laboratory comparable to one which, while it dissolves silex, neither harms the insect nor injures its shell. Amongst the fossils we notice cockles as big as ostrich eggs, clam-shells twice the size of the largest of our Sussex coast, and those of oysters which rival soup-plates. We had indeed once before met with them of equal size in the lime-beds at Corneto. Judging by the oysters, there must indeed have been giants in those days. But this collection was chiefly remarkable for its curious fossil remains of animals from Monte Grifone. In this same Monte Grifone, which we went to visit, is one of the largest of the caves of bones of which so many have been discovered—bones of various kinds, some of small, some of very large animals, mixed together pell-mell, and constituting a fossil paste of scarcely any thing besides. None of the geologists, in attempting to explain these deposits, sufficiently enter into the question of the origin of the enormous quantity, and close juxtaposition, of such heterogeneous specimens.

By eight o'clock we are on board the Palermo steamer, which is to convey us hence to Messina. The baked deck, which has been saturated with the sun's heat all day, is now cooling to a more moderate warmth, and soothing would be the scene but for the noise of women and children. Large liquid stars twinkle here and there, like so many moons on a reduced scale, over the sea, and the night is wholly delightful! A bell rings, which diminishes our numbers, and somewhat clears our deck. The boats which carry off the last loiterers are gone, shaking phosphorus from 028their gills, and leaving a train of it in their tails; and the many-windowed Pharos of the harbour has all its panes lit up, and twinkles after its own fashion. Round the bay an interrupted crescent of flickering light is reflected in the water, strongest in the middle, where the town is thickest, and runs back; and far behind all lights comes the clear outline of the darkly defined mountain rising over the city. Our own lantern also is up, the authorities have disappeared, Monte Pelegrino begins to change its position, we are in motion, and a mighty light we are making under us, as our leviathan, turning round her head and snuffing the sea, begins to wind out of the harbour. A few minutes more, and the luminous tracery of the receding town becomes more and more indistinct; but the sky is all stars, and the water, save where we break its smoothness, a perfect mirror. Wherever the paddles play, there the sea foams up into yellow light and gerbes of amber-coloured fireballs, caught up by the wheels, and flung off in our track, to float past with incredible rapidity. Men are talking the language of Babel in the cabin; there is amateur singing and a guitar on deck—Orion is on his dolphin—adieu, Palermo!

APPROACH TO MESSINA.

The Italian morning presents a beautiful sight on deck to eyes weary and sore with night, as night passes on board steamers. We pass along a coast obviously of singular conformation, and to a geologist, we suppose, full of interest. We encounter a herd of classical dolphins out a-pleasuring. We ask about a pretty little town perched just above the sea, and called Giocosa. By its side lies Tyndaris—classical enough if we spell it right. The snow on Etna is as good as an inscription, and to be read at any distance; but what a deception! they tell us it is thirty miles off, and it seems to rise immediately from behind a ridge of hills close to the shore. The snow cone rises in the midst of other cones, which would appear equally high but for the difference of colour. Patti is a picturesque little borgo, on the hillside, celebrated in Sicily for its manufacture of hardware. In the bay of Melazzo are taken by far the largest supplies of thunny in the whole Mediterranean. From the embayed town so named you have the choice of a cross-road to Messina, (twenty-four miles;) but who would abridge distance and miss the celebrated straits towards which we are rapidly approaching, or lose one hour on land and miss the novelties of volcanic islands, and the first view of Scylla and Charybdis? It is but eight o'clock, but the awning has been stretched over our heads an hour ago. As to breakfast—the meal which is associated with that particular hour of the four-and-twenty to all well regulated minds and stomachs—it consists here of thin veneers of old mahogany-coloured thunny, varnished with oil, and relieved by an incongruous abomination of capers and olives. The cold fowls are infamous. The wine were a disgrace to the sorriest tapster between this and the Alps, and also fiery, like every thing else in this district. Drink it, and doubt not the old result—de conviva Corybanta videbis. (Oh, for muffins and dry toast!) Never mind, we shall soon be at Messina. And now we approach a point from which the lofty Calabrian coast opposite, and the flinty wall of the formidable Scylla, first present themselves, but still as distant objects. In another half hour we are just opposite the redoubtable rock; and here we turn abruptly at right angles to our hitherto course, and find ourselves within the straits, from either side of which the English and the French so often tried the effect of cannon upon each other. It is now what it used to be—fishing ground. The Romans got their finest muræna from the whirlpools of Charybdis.¹⁷ The shark (cane di mare) abounding here, would make bathing dangerous were the water smooth; but the rapid whirlpools through which our steam-boat dashes on disdainfully, 029would, at the same time, make it impossible to any thing but a fish. A passenger assured us he had once seen a man lost in the Vistula, who, from being a great swimmer, trusted imprudently to his strength, and was sucked down by a vortex of far less impetuosity, he thought, than this through which we were moving. From this point till we arrived at Messina, as every body was ripe for bathing, the whole conversation turned naturally on the Messina shark, and his trick of snapping at people's legs carelessly left by the owners dangling over the boat's side. We steam up the straits to our anchorage in about three-fourths of an hour. The approach is fine, very fine. A certain Greek, (count, he called himself,) a great traveller, and we afterwards found not a small adventurer, increases the interest of the approach, by telling us that the hills before us, bubbling up like blisters on chalcedony, have a considerable resemblance, though inferior in character, to those which embellish the Bosphorus and the first view of Constantinople. Inferior, no doubt, in the imposing accessories of mosque and minaret, and of cypresses as big as obelisks, which, rising thickly on the heights, give to the city of Constantinople an altogether peculiar and inimitable charm. Messina is beautifully land-locked. The only possible winds that can affect its port are the north-west and south-east. In summer it is said to enjoy more sea breeze than any other place on the Mediterranean. Our Greek friend, however, says that Constantinople is in this respect not only superior to Messina, but to any other place in the seas of Europe. Pity that the fellows are Turks! We did not find much to interest us within the walls of Messina. There was, to be sure, a fine collection of Sicilian birds, amongst which we were surprised to see several of very exotic shape and plumage. One long-legged fellow, dressed in a dirty white Austrian uniform, with large web-feet, on which he seemed to rest with great complacency, particularly arrested our attention. He stood as high as the Venus di Medici, but by no means so gracefully, and thrust his thick carved beak unceremoniously in your face. His card of address was Phoenicopterus antiquorum. The ancients ate him, and he looked as if he would break your nose if you disputed with him. A very large finch, which we have seen for sale about the streets here and elsewhere in Sicily, rejoices in the imposing name of Fringilla cocco thraustis. He wears his black cravat like a bird of pretension, as he evidently is. The puffin (Puffinus Anglorum) also frequents these rocks, though a very long way from the Isle of Wight. No! Messina, though very fine, is not equal to Palermo, with its unrivaled Marina, compared to which Messina is poorly off indeed, in her straggling dirty commerce-doing quay. We went out to see a little garden, which contains half a dozen zare-trees and as many beautiful birds in cages. We are disappointed at the poverty of our dessert in this region of fruitfulness—a few bad oranges, some miserable cherries, and that abomination the green almond. We observe, for the first time, to-day folks eating in the streets the crude contents of a little oval pod, which contains one or two very large peas, twice the size of any others. These are the true cicer, the proper Italian pea. Little bundles of them are tied up for sale at all the fruit stalls, and men are seen all the day long eating these raw peas, and offering them to each other as sugar-plums.

In the Corso we see a kind of temporary theatre, the deal sides of which are gaudily lined with Catania silk, and on its stage a whole dramatis personæ of sacred puppets. It is lighted by tapers of very taper dimensions, and its stalle are to be let for a humble consideration to the faithful or the curious. It turns out to be a religious spectacle, supported on the voluntary system—but there is something for your money. A vast quantity of light framework, to which fireworks, chiefly of the detonating kind, are attached, are already going off, and folk are watching till it be completed. Then the evening's entertainment will begin, and a miser indeed must he be, or beyond measure resourceless, who refuses halfpence for such choice festivities. Desirous to make out the particular representation, we get over the fence in order to examine the figures of the drama on a nearer view. A smartly dressed saint in a court 030suit, but whom mitre and crosier determine to be a bishop, kneels to a figure in spangles, a virgin as fond of fine clothes as the Greek Panageia; while on the other side, with one or two priests in his train, is seen a crowd in civil costume. A paper cloud above, surrounded by glories of glass and tinsel, is supported by two solid cherubs equal to the occasion, and presents to the intelligent a representation of—we know not what! Fire-works here divide the public with the drum—to one or other all advertisement in Sicily is committed. A sale of fish and flesh, theatric entertainments, processions, and church invitations, are all by tuck of drum, or by squib and cracker. How did they get on before the invention of gunpowder? If a new coffeehouse is established, a couple of drums start it advantageously, and beat like a recruiting party up and down the street, to the dismay of all Forestieri. The drum tells you when the thunny is at a discount, and fire-works are let off at fish stalls when customers are slack.

An old tower, five miles off, is called the telegraph. People go there for the panorama at the expense of three horses and two hours; but you are repaid by two sea views, either of which had been sufficient. Messina, its harbour, the straits, the opposite coast of Calabria, Scylla, and Rhegium, (famed for its bergamot,) are on the immediate shore, and a most striking chain of hills for the background, which, at a greater distance, have for their background the imposing range of the Abruzzi. The Æolian islands rise out of the sea in the happiest positions for effect. Stromboli on the extreme right detaches his grey wreath of smoke, which seems as if it proceeded out of the water, (for Stromboli is very low,) staining for a moment the clear firmament, which rivals it in depth of colour. Some of the volcanic group are so nearly on a level with the water, that they look like the backs of so many leviathans at a halt. The sea itself lies, a waveless mirror, smooth, shining, slippery, and treacherous as a serpent's back—"miseri quibus intentata nites," say we.

JOURNEY TO TAORMINA.

We left Messina under a sky which no painter would or could attempt; indeed, it would not have looked well on paper, or out of reality. There are certain unusual, yet magnificent appearances in nature, from which the artist conventionally abstains, not so much from the impotence of art, as that the nearer his approach to success the worse the picture. At one time the colours were like shot or clouded silk, or the beautiful uncertainty of the Palamida of these shores, or the matrix of opal; at another, the Pacific Ocean above, of which the continuity is often for whole months entire, was broken into gigantic continents and a Polynesia of rose-coloured islands that no ships might approach; while in this nether world the middle of the Calabro-Sicilian strait was occupied by a condensation of vapour, (one could never profane them by the term of sea-mist or fog,) the most subtile and attenuated which ever came from the realms of cloud-compelling Jove. This fleecy tissue pursued its deliberate progress from coast to coast, like a cortege of cobwebs carrying a deputation from the power-looms of Arachne in Italy to the rival silk-looms at Catania. We pass the dry beds of mountain torrents at every half mile, ugly gashes on a smooth road; and requiring too much caution to leave one's attention to be engaged by many objects altogether new and beautiful. The rich yellow of the Cactus, and the red of the Pomegranate, and the most tender of all vegetable greens, that of the young mulberry, together with a sweet wilderness of unfamiliar plants, are not to be perfectly enjoyed on a fourfooted animal that stumbles, or on a road full of pitfalls. We shall only say that the Cynara cardunculus, (a singularly fine thistle or wild artichoke;) the prickly uncultivated love-apple, (a beautiful variety of the Solanum,) of which the decoction is not infrequently employed in nephritic complaints; the Ferula, sighing for occupation all along the sea-shore, and shaking its scourge as the wind blows; the Rhododendron, in full blossom, planted 031amongst the shingles; the Thapsia gargarica, with its silver umbel, looking at a short distance like mica, (an appearance caused by the shining white fringe of the capsule encasing its seed,) and many other strange and beautiful things, were the constant attendants of our march. We counted six or seven varieties of the spurge, (Euphorbium,) each on its milky stem, and in passing through the villages had Carnations as large as Dahlias flung at us by sunburnt urchins posted at their several doors. The sandy shore for many miles is beautifully notched in upon by tiny bays like basins, on which boats lie motionless and baking in the sun, or oscillate under a picturesque rock, immersed up to its shoulders in a green hyaloid, which reflects their forms from a depth of many fathoms. On more open stretches of the shore, long-drawn ripples of waves of tiny dimension are overrunning and treading on one another's heels for miles a-head, and tapping the anchored boat "with gentle blow." The long-horned oxen already spoken of, toil along the seaside road like the horses on our canal banks, and tug the heavy felucca towards Messina—a service, however, sometimes executed by men harnessed to the towing-cord, who, as they go, offend the Sicilian muses by sounds and by words that have little indeed of the Δωριζ αοιδα. The gable ends of cottages often exhibit a very primitive windmill for sawing wood within doors. It is a large wheel, to the spokes of which flappers are adjusted, made of coarse matting, and so placed as to profit by the ordinary sea breeze; and, while the wind is thus sawing his planks for him, the carpenter, at his door, carries on his craft. We pass below not a few fortresses abutting over the sea, or perched on the mountain tops. Many of these are of English construction, and date from the occupation of the island during the French war: in a word, the whole of this Sicilian road is so variously lovely, that if we did not know the cornice between Nice and Genoa, we should say it was quite unrivaled, being at once in lavish possession of all the grand, and most of the milder elements of landscape composition. It is long since it became no wonder to us that the greatest and in fact the only, real pastoral poet should have been a Sicilian; but it is a marvel indeed, that, having forgotten to bring his Eclogues with us, we cannot, through the whole of Sicily, find a copy of Theocitus for sale, though there is a Sicilian translation of him to be had at Palermo. As he progresses thus delightfully, a long-wished for moment awaits the traveller approaching towards Giardini—turning round a far projecting neck of land, Etna is at last before him! A disappointment, however, on the whole is Etna himself, thus introduced. He looks far below his stature, and seems so near, that we would have wagered to get upon his shoulders and pull his ears, and return to the little town to dine; the ascent also, to the eye, seems any thing but steep; nor can you easily be brought to believe that such an expedition is from Giardini a three days' affair, except, indeed, that yonder belt of snow in the midst of this roasting sunshine, has its own interpretation, and cannot be mistaken. Alas! In the midst of all our flowers there was, as there always is, the amari aliquid—it was occasioned here by the flies. They had tasked our improved capacity for bearing annoyances ever since we first set foot in Sicily; but here they are perfectly incontrollable, stinging and buzzing at us without mercy or truce, not to be driven off for a second, nor persuaded to drown themselves on any consideration. Verily, the honey-pots of Hybla itself seem to please these troublesome insects less than the flesh-pots of Egypt.

The next day begins inauspiciously for our ascent to Taormina; but the attendants of the excursion are already making a great noise, without which nothing can be done in either of the two Sicilies. A supply of shabby donkeys are brought and mounted, and, once astride, we begin to ascend, the poor beasts tottering under our weight, and by their constant stumbling affording us little inclination to look about. It takes about three-fourths of an hour of this donkey-riding to reach the old notched wall of the town. Two Taorminian citizens at this moment issue from under its arch, in their way down, and guessing what we are, offer some indifferent coins which do not suit us, 032but enable us to enter into conversation. We demand and obtain a cicerone, of whom we are glad to get rid after three hours' infliction of his stupidity and endurance of his ignorance, without acquiring one idea, Greek, Roman, Norman, or Saracen, out of all his erudition. After going through the whole tour with such a fellow for a Hermes, we come at last upon the far-famed theatre, where we did not want him. Here, however, a very intelligent attendant, supported by the king of Naples on a suitable pension of five baiocchi a-day, takes us out of the hands of the Philistine, and with a plan of the ground to aid us, proceeds to give an intelligible, and, as appears to us, a true explanation of the different parts of the huge construction, in the area of which we stand delighted. He directed our attention to a large arched tunnel, under and at right angles to the pulpita, and we did not want direction to the thirty-six niches placed at equal distances all round the ellipse, and just over the lowest range of the CUNEI. All niches were, no doubt, for statues; but these might also have been, it pleases some to suppose, for the reverberation of applause; and they quote something about "Resonantia Vasa" from Macrobius, adding, that such niches were once probably lined with brass. Of bolder speculatists, some believe the kennel to have been made with a similar intention. Others hold that it may have been a concealed way for introducing lions and tigers to the arena! Now, what if it were a drain for the waters, which, in bad weather, soon collect to a formidable height in such a situation? Whether for voice, or wild beasts, or drainage, or none of these objects, there it is. As to the first, we cannot help being sceptical. Did it ever occur to an audience to wish the noise they make greater, and contrive expedients for making it so?

We are here high up amidst the mountains, where, we are to remember, as the ancients came not to spend, like ourselves, an idle hour, but to consume most of the day, shelter would be wanted. Two large lateral spaces, or as it were, side chambers, have received this destination at the hands of the antiquary, and have been supposed lobbies for foul weather or for shade at noon. We were made to notice by our guide, what we should else have overlooked, how the main passage described above communicates with several smaller ones in its progress, and that a small stair was a subsequent contrivance or afterthought meant to relieve, on emergency, the overcharged large one; its workmanship and style showed it plainly to have been added when the edifice had already become an antiquity. This altogether peculiar and most interesting building has also suffered still later interpolations: a Saracenic frieze runs round the wall; so that the hands of three widely different nations have been busy on the mountain theatre, which received its first audience twenty-five centuries ago! The view obtained from this spot has often been celebrated, and deserves to be. Such mountains we had often seen before; such a sky is the usual privilege of Sicily; these indented bays, which break so beautifully the line of the coast, had been an object of our daily admiration; the hoary side of the majestic Etna, and Naxos with its castellated isthmus, might be seen from other elevated situations; and the acuminated tops of Mola, with its Saracenic tower, were commanded by neighbouring sites—Taormina alone, and for its own sake, was the great and paramount object in our eyes, and possessed us wholly! We had been following Lyell half the day in antediluvian remains; but what are the bones of Ichthyosauri or Megalotheria to this gigantic skeleton of Doric antiquity, round which lie scattered the sepulchres of its ancient audiences, Greek, Roman, and Oriental—tombs which had become already an object of speculation, and been rifled for arms, vases, or gold rings, before Great Britain had made the first steps beyond painted barbarism!

The eruptions of Etna have all been recorded. Thucydides mentions one of them episodically in the Peloponesian war. From the cooled caldron that simmers under all that snow, has proceeded all the lava that the ancients worked into these their city walls. The houses of Taurominium were built of and upon lava, which it requires a thousand years to disintegrate. After dinner we walk to Naxos, saluting the 033statue of the patron of a London parish, St Pancras, on our way. He stands on the beach here, and claims, by inscription on his pedestal, to have belonged to the apostolic times, St Peter himself having, he says, appointed him to his bishopric. He is patron of Taormina, where he has possessed himself of a Greek temple; and he also protects the faithful of Giardini. Lucky in his architects has been St Pancras; for many of our readers are familiar with his very elegant modern church in the New Road, modelled, if we have not forgotten, on the Erechtheum, with its Pandrosean Vestries, its upright tiles, and all the subordinate details of Athenian architecture. We met here the subject of many an ancient bas relief done into flesh and blood—a dozen men and boys tripping along the road to the music of a bagpipe, one old Silenus leading the jocund throng, and the whole of them, as the music, such as it was, inspired, leaping about and gesticulating with incredible activity. It was a bacchanalian subject, which we had seen on many a sarcophagus, only that the fellows here were not quite naked, and that we looked in vain for those nascent horns and tails by which the children of Pan and Faunus ought to be identified. We always look out for natural history. Walking in a narrow street, we saw a tortoise, awake for the season, come crawling out to peep at the poultry; his hybernation being over, he wants to be social, and the hens in astonishment chuckle round him, and his tortoiseshell highness seems pleased at their kind enquiries, and keeps bobbing his head in and out of his testudo in a very sentimental manner. Women who want his shell for combs do not frequent these parts, and so, unless a cart pass over him as he returns home, he is in clover.

A bird frequents these parts with a blue chest, called Passer solitarius; he abounds in the rocky crevices. The notes of one, which was shown to us in a cage, sounded sweetly; but, as he was carnivorous, the weather was too hot for us to think of taking him away. We saw two snakes put into the same box: the one, a viper, presently killed the other, and much the larger of the two. Serpents, then, like men, do not, as the Satirist asserts, spare their kind. We are disappointed at not finding any coins, nor any other good souvenirs, to bring away with us. The height of Taormina is sufficient to keep it from fever, which is very prevalent at Giardini below. Its bay was once a great place for catching mullet for the Roman market. It seems to have been the Torbay of Sicily. Some fish love their ease, and rejoice not in turbulent waters. The muræna, or lamprey, on the contrary, was sought in the very whirlpools of Charybdis. The modern Roman, on his own side of Italy, has few turbot, but very good ones are still taken off Ancona, in the Adriatic, where the spatium admirabile Rhombi, as the reader will, or ought to recollect, was taken and sent to Domitian at Albano by Procaccio or Estafetta. Juvenal complains that the Tyrrhene sea was exhausted by the demand for fish, though there was no Lent in those times. If the Catholic clergy insist that there was, we beg to object, that the keepers thereof were probably not in a condition to compete with the Apiciuses of the day, who bought fish for their bodies', and not for their SOULS' SAKE.

CATANIA.

After a pleasant drive of twenty miles, we find ourselves at Aci-Reale, where a street, called "Galatea," reminds us unexpectedly of a very classical place called Dean's Yard, where we once had doings with Acis, as he figures in Ovid's Metamorphoses. We were here in luck, and, having purchased some fine coins of several of the tyrants of Sicily from the apothecary, proceeded on our way to Catania. In half an hour we reach the basaltic Isles of the Cyclops, and the Castle of Acis, whom the peasants hereabouts tell you was their king, when Sicily was under the Saracenic yoke. The 034river Lecatia, now lost, is supposed formerly to have issued hereabouts, in the port of Ulysses. Our next move placed us amidst the silk-slops of Catania. We have hardly been five minutes in the town, when offers abound to conduct us up Ætna, in whom, as so much national wealth, the inhabitants seem to take as much interest as in her useful and productive silk-looms. Standing fearless on the pavement of lava that buried their ancient city, they point up with complacency to its fountains above. The mischievous exploits of Ætna, in past times, are in every mouth, and children learn their Ætnean catechism as soon as they are breeched. Ætna here is all in all. Churches are constructed out of his quarried viscera—great men lie in tombs, of which the stones once ran liquid down his flames—snuff is taken out of lava boxes—and devotion carves the crucifix on lava, and numbers its beads on a lava rosary—nay, the apothecary's mortar was sent him down from the great mortar-battery above, and the village belle wears fire-proof bracelets that were once too hot to be meddled with. Go to the museum, and you will call it a museum of Ætnean products. Nodulated, porous, condensed, streaked, spotted, clouded, granulated lava, here assumes the colour, rivals the compactness, sustains the polish, of jasper, of agate, and of marble; indeed it sometimes surpasses, in beautiful veinage, the finest and rarest Marmorean specimens. You would hardly distinguish some of it, worked into jazza or vase, from rosso antico itself. A very old and rusty armoury may, as here, be seen any where; but a row of formidable shark skulls, taken along the coast, and some in the very port of Catania, are rarities on which the ciceroni like to prelect, being furnished with many a story of bathers curtailed by them, and secure a large portion of attention, especially if you were just thinking of a dip. A rather fine collection of bronzes has been made from excavations in the neighbourhood, which, indeed, must always promise to reward research. A figure of Mercury, two and a half feet high, and so exactly similar to that of John of Bologna, that his one seemed an absolute plagiarism, particularly attracted our attention on that account. The great Italian artist, however, had been dead one hundred and fifty years before this bronze was dug up. Next in importance to the bronzes, we esteem the collection of Sicilian, or Græco-Sicilian vases, though inferior in number and selectness to those of the Vatican, or Museo-Borbonico. There is also some ancient sculpture, and some pretty mosaic. Of this composition is a bathfloor, where a family of Cupids, in the centre of the pavement, welcome you with a utere feliciter, (may it do you good.) Round the border, a circle of the personified "months" is artistically chained together, each bearing his Greek name, for fear of a mistake—names not half so good as Sheridan's translation of the Revolutionary calendar—snowy, flowy, blowy—showery, flowery, bowery—moppy, croppy, poppy—breezy, sneezy, freezy. In Catania, we find no lack of coins, nor of sharp-eyed dealers, who know pretty generally their value throughout Europe; but, in order to be quite sure of the price current, ask double what they take from one another, and judge, by your abatement of it, of the state of the market elsewhere. Now mind, sir, when they present you the most impudent forgeries, you are not to get into a passion; but, glancing from the object to the vender, quietly insinuate your want of absolute conviction in a "che vi pare di questa moneta." He now looks at it again, and takes a squint at you; and supposing you smell a rat, probably replies that certainly he bought it for genuine; but you have suggested a doubt, and the piece really begins, even to him, to look suspicious, "anzi à me." You reply coolly, and put it down—"That was just what I was thinking;" and so the affair passes quietly off. And now you may, if you happen to be tender-hearted, say something compassionate to the poor innocent who has been taken in, and proceed to ask him about another; and when you see any thing you long to pocket, enquire what can he afford to let a brother collector (give him a step in rank) have it for; and so go on feeling your way, and never "putting your arm so far out that you cannot comfortably draw it back again." He will probably ask you if you know Mr B—— or C——, (English 035collectors,) with whom he has had dealings, calling them "stimabili signori;" and, of course, you have no doubt of it, though you never heard of them before. It is also always conciliative to congratulate him on the possession of such and such rare and "belle cose;" and if you thus contrive to get into his good graces, he will deal with you at fair prices, and perhaps amuse you with an account of such tricks as he is not ashamed to have practised on blockheads, who will buy at any cost if the die is fine. Indeed, it has passed into an aphorism among these mezzo-galantuomini, as their countrymen call them, that a fine coin is always worth what you can get for it.

We heard the celebrated organ of St Benedict, which has been praising God in tremendous hallelujahs ever since it was put up, and a hundred years have only matured the richness of its tones. Its voice was gushing out as we entered the church, and filling nave and aisle with a diapason of all that was soft and soothing, as if a choir of Guido's angels had broke out in harmony.

A stream of fresh water issues under the old town-wall, and an immense mass of incumbent lava, of at least ninety feet high, impends just above its source, the water struggling through a mass of rock once liquefied by fire, in as limpid a rill as if it came from limestone, and so excellent in quality that no other is used in Catania. Women with buckets were ascending and descending to fetch supplies out of the lava of the dead city below, for the use of the living town above. Moreover, this is the only point in Catania where the accident of a bit of wall arresting for some time the progress of the lava current, has left the level of the old town to be rigidly ascertained.

Here, as at Aci-Reale, balconies at windows, for the most part supported by brackets, terminating in human heads, give a rich, though rather a heavy, appearance to the street. Much amber is found and worked at Catania. It has been lately discovered in a fossil state, and in contiguity with fossil wood; but we were quite electrified at the price of certain little scent-bottles, and other articles made of this production. You see it in all its possible varieties of colour, opacity, or transparency. The green opalized kind is the most prized, and four pounds was demanded for a pair of pendants of this colour for earrings. Besides the yellow sort, which is common every where, we see the ruby red, which is very rare: some varieties are freckled, and some of the sort which afforded subjects for Martial, and for more than one of the Greek anthologists, with insects in its matrix. This kind, they say, is found exclusively on the coast of Catania. There are such pieces the size of a hand, but it is generally in much smaller bits. Amber lies under, or is formed upon the sand, and abounds most near the embouchure of a small river in this neighbourhood. Many beautiful shells, fossils, and other objects of natural history, appear in the dealers' trays; and polished knife-handles of Sicilian agate may be had at five dollars a dozen. 036

THE LAST OF THE KNIGHTS.

DON JOHN AND THE HERETICS OF FLANDERS.

It would almost seem as though chivalry were one of the errors of Popery; so completely did the spirit of the ancient orders of knighthood evaporate at the Reformation! The blind enthusiasm of ignorance having engendered superstitions of every kind and colour, the blow struck at the altar of the master idol proved fatal to all.

In Elizabeth's time, the forms and sentiment of chivalry were kept up by an effort. The parts enacted by Sidney and Raleigh, appear studied rather than instinctive. At all events, the gallant Sir Philip was the last of English knights, as he was the first of his time. Thenceforward, the valour of the country assumed a character more professional.

But a fact thus familiar to us of England, is more remarkable of the rest of Europe. The infallibility of Rome once assailed, every faith was shaken. Loyalty was lessened, chivalry became extinct; expiring in France with Henri IV. and the League—in Portugal with Don Sebastian of Braganza—and in Spain with Charles V., exterminated root and branch by the pen of Cervantes.

One of the most brilliant effervescences, however, of those crumbling institutions, is connected with Spanish history, in the person of Don John of Austria;—a prince who, if consecrated by legitimacy to the annals of the throne, would have glorified the historical page by a thousand heroic incidents. But the sacrament of his baptism being unhappily unpreceded by that of a marriage, he has bequeathed us one of those anomalous existences—one of those incomplete destinies, which embitter our admiration with disappointment and regret.

On both sides of royal blood, Don John was born with qualifications to adorn a throne. It is true that when his infant son was entrusted by Charles V. to the charge of the master of his household, Don Quexada, the emperor simply described him as the offspring of a lady of Ratisbon, named Barbara Blomberg. But the Infanta Clara Eugenia was confidentially informed by her father Philip II., and confidentially informed her satellite La Cuea, that her uncle was "every way of imperial lineage;" and but that he was the offspring of a crime, Don John had doubtless been seated on one of those thrones to which his legitimate brother Philip imparted so little distinction.

Forced by the will of Charles V. to recognize the consanguinity of Don John, and treat him with brotherly regard, one of the objects of the hateful life of the father of Don Carlos seems to have been to thwart the ambitious instincts of his brilliant Faulconbridge. For in the boiling veins of the young prince abided the whole soul of Charles V.,—valour, restlessness, ambition; and his romantic life and mysterious death bear alike the tincture of his parentage.

That was indeed the age of the romance of royalty! Mary at Holyrood,—Elizabeth at Kenilworth—Carlos at the feet of his mother-in-law,—the Béarnais at the gates of Paris,—have engraved their type in the book of universal memory. But Don John escapes notice—a solitary star outshone by dazzling constellations. Commemorated by no medals, flattered by no historiographer, sung by no inspired "godson," anointed by neither pope nor primate, his nook in the temple of fame is out of sight, and forgotten.

Even his master feat, the gaining of the battle of Lepanto, brings chiefly to our recollection that the author of Don Quixote lost his hand in the action; and in the trivial page before us, we dare not call our hero by the name of "Don Juan," (by which he is known in Spanish history,) lest he be mistaken for the popular libertine! And thus, the last of the knights has been stripped of his name by the hero of the "Festin de Pierre," and of his honours by Cervantes, as by Philip II. of a throne.—

Hard fate for one described by all 037the writers of his time as a model of manly grace and Christian virtue! How charming is the account given by the old Spanish writers of the noble youth, extricated from his convent to be introduced on the high-road to a princely cavalier, surrounded by his retinue, whom he is first desired to salute as a brother, and then required to worship, as the king of Spain! We are told of his joy on discovering his filial relationship to the great emperor, so long the object of his admiration. We are told of his deeds of prowess against the Turks at Lepanto, at Tunis against the Moor. We are told of the proposition of Gregory XIII. that he should be rewarded with the crown of Barbary, and of the desire of the revolted nobility of Belgium, to raise him to their tottering throne; nay, we are even assured that "la couronne d'Hibernie" was offered to his acceptance. And finally, we are told of his untimely death and glorious funeral—mourned by all the knighthood of the land! But we hear and forget. Some mysterious counter-charm has stripped his laurels of their verdure. Even the lesser incidents of the life of Don John are replete with the interest of romance. When appointed by Philip II. governor of the Netherlands, in order that he might deal with the heretics of the Christian faith as with the faithful of Mahomet, such deadly vengeance was vowed against his person by the Protestant party headed by Horn and the Prince of Orange, that it was judged necessary for his highness to perform his journey in disguise. Attired as a Moorish slave, he reached Luxembourg as the attendant of Ottavio Gonzaga, brother of Prince Amalfi, at the very moment the troops of the king of Spain were butchering eight thousand citizens in his revolted city of Antwerp!—

The arrival of the new governor afforded the signal for more pacific measures. The dispositions of Don John were humane—his manners frank. Aware that the Belgian provinces were exhausted by ten years of civil war, and that the pay of the Spanish troops he had to lead against them was so miserably in arrear as to compel them to acts of atrocious spoliation, the hero of Lepanto appears to have done his best to stop the effusion of blood; and, notwithstanding the counteraction of the Prince of Orange, the following spring, peace and an amnesty were proclaimed. The treaty signed at Marche, (known by the name of the Perpetual Edict,) promised as much tranquillity as was compatible with the indignation of a country which had seen the blood of its best and noblest poured forth, and the lives and property of its citizens sacrificed without mercy or calculation.

But, though welcomed to Brussels by the acclamations of the people and the submission of the States, Don John appears to have been fully sensible that his head was within the jaws of the lion. The blood of Egmont had not yet sunk into the earth; the echoes of the edicts of Alva yet lingered in the air; and the very stones of Brussels appeared to rise up and testify against a brother of Philip II.!

Right thankful, therefore, was the young prince when an excuse was afforded for establishing himself in a more tenable position, by an incident which must again be accounted among the romantic adventures of his life. For the sudden journey of the fascinating Margaret of Valois to the springs of Spa, on pretence of indisposition, was generally attributed to a design against the heart of the hero of Lepanto.

A prince so remarkable for his gallantry of knighthood, could do no less than wait upon the sister of the French king, on her passage through Namur; and, once established in the citadel of that stronghold of the royalists, he quitted it no more. In process of time, a camp was formed in the environs, and fortresses erected on the banks of the Meuse under the inspection of Don John; nor was it at first easy to determine whether his measures were actuated by mistrust of the Protestants, or devotion to the worst and most Catholic of wives of the best and most Huguenot of kings.

The blame of posterity, enlightened by the journal of Queen Margaret's proceedings in Belgium, (bequeathed for our edification by the alienated queen of Henri IV.,) has accused Don John of blindness, in the right-loyal reception bestowed on her, and the absolute liberty accorded her during 038her residence at Spa, where she was opening a road for the arrival of her brother the Duke of Alençon. It is admitted, indeed, that her attack upon his heart met with defeat. But the young governor is said to have made up in chivalrous courtesies for the disappointment of her tender projects; and Margaret, if she did not find a lover at Namur, found the most assiduous of knights.

Many, indeed, believe that his attentions to the French princess were as much a feint as her own illness; and that he was as completely absorbed in keeping at bay his heretic subjects, as her highness by the desire of converting them into the subjects of France. It was only those admitted into the confidence of Don John who possessed the clue to the mystery.

Ottavio Gonzaga, on his return from a mission to Madrid with which he had been charged by Don John, was the first to acquaint him with the suspicions to which the sojourn of Margaret had given rise.

"I own I expected to find your highness in better cheer," said he, when the first compliments had been exchanged. "Such marvels have been recounted in Spain of your fêtes and jousts of honour, that I had prepared myself to hear of nothing at headquarters but the silken pastimes of a court."

"Instead of which," cried Don John, "you find me, as usual, in my steel jerkin, with no milder music at command than the trumpets of my camp; my sole duty, the strengthening of yonder lines," continued he, (pointing from a window of the citadel, near which they were standing, commanding the confluence of the Sambre and Meuse,) "and my utmost diversion, an occasional charge against the boars in yonder forest of Marlagne!"

"I cannot but suppose it more than occasional," rejoined Gonzaga; "for I must pay your highness the ill compliment of avowing, that you appear more worn by fatigue and weather at this moment, and in this sunless clime, than at the height of your glorious labours in the Mediterranean! Namur has already ploughed more wrinkles on your brow than Barbary or Lepanto."

"Say rather in my heart!" cried the impetuous prince. "Since you quitted me, six months ago, my dear Gonzaga, I have known nothing but cares! To you I have no scruple in avowing, that my position in this country is hateful. So long accustomed to war against a barbarous enemy, I could almost fancy myself as much a Moor at heart, as I appeared in visage, when in your service on my way to Luxembourg, whenever I find my sword uplifted against a Christian breast!—Civil war, Ottavio, is a hideous and repugnant thing!"—

"The report is true, then, that your highness has become warmly attached to the people of these rebel provinces?" demanded Gonzaga, not choosing to declare the rumour prevalent in Spain, that an opportunity had been afforded to the prince by the Barlaimont faction, of converting his viceroyalty into the sway of absolute sovereignty.

"So much the reverse, that the evil impression they made on me at my arrival, has increased a hundred-fold! I abhor them yet more and more. Flemings or Brabançons, Hainaulters or Walloons, Catholic or Calvinist, the whole tribe is my aversion; and despite our best endeavours to conceal it, I am convinced the feeling is reciprocal!"

"If your highness was equally candid in your avowals to the Queen of Navarre," observed Gonzaga gravely,—"I can scarcely wonder at the hopes she is said to entertain of having won over the governor of Mons to the French interest, during her transit through Flanders."

"Ay, indeed? Is such her boast?" cried the prince, laughing. "It may indeed be so!—for never saw I a woman less scrupulous in the choice or use of arms to fight her battles. But, trust me, whatever her majesty may have accomplished, is through no aiding or abetting of mine."

"My highness made them appear devoted in proportion to his consciousness of their hollowness! But I promise you, my dear Ottavio, there is no tenderer leaning in my heart towards Margaret de Valois, than towards the most thicklipped of the divinities who competed for our smiles at Tunis." 039 Gonzaga shrugged his shoulders. He was convinced that, for once, Don John was sinking the friend in the prince. His prolonged absence had perhaps discharged him from his post as confidant.

"Trust me," cried the young soldier, discerning his misgivings—"I am as sincere in all this as becomes our friendship. But that God has gifted me with a happy temperament, I should scarcely support the disgusts of my present calling. It is much, my dear Gonzaga, to inherit as a birthright the brand of such an ignominy as mine. But as long as I trusted to conquer a happier destiny—to carve out for myself fortunes as glorious as those to which my blood all but entitles me—I bore my cross without repining. It was this ardent hope of distinction that lent vigour to my arm in battle—that taught prudence to my mind in council. I was resolved that even the base-born of Charles V. should die a king!"—

Gonzaga listened in startled silence. To hear the young viceroy thus bold in the avowal of sentiments, which of late he had been hearing imputed to him at the Escurial as the direst of crimes, filled him with amazement.

"But these hopes have expired!" resumed Don John. "The harshness with which, on my return triumphant from Barbary, my brother refused to ratify the propositions of the Vatican in my favour, convinced me that I have nothing to expect from Philip beyond the perpetual servitude of a satellite of the King of Spain."

Gonzaga glanced mechanically round the chamber at the emission of these treasonable words. But there was nothing in its rude stone walls to harbour an eavesdropper.

"Nor is this all!" cried his noble friend. "My discovery of the unbrotherly sentiments of Philip has tended to enlighten me towards the hatefulness of his policy. The reserve of his nature—the harshness of his soul—the austerity of his bigotry—chill me to the marrow!—The Holy Inquisition deserves, in my estimation, a name the very antithesis of holy."

"I beseech your highness!" cried Ottavio Gonzaga—clasping his hands together in an irrepressible panic.

"Never fear, man! There be neither spies nor inquisitors in our camp; and if there were, both they and you must even hear me out!" cried Don John. "There is some comfort in discharging one's heart of matters that have long lain so heavy on it; and I swear to you, Gonzaga, that, instead of feeling surprised to find my cheeks so lank, and my eyes so hollow, you would rather be amazed to find an ounce of flesh upon my bones, did you know how careful are my days, and how sleepless my nights, under the perpetual harassments of civil war!—The haughty burgesses of Ghent, whom I could hate from my soul but that they are townsmen of my illustrious father, the low-minded Walloons, the morose Brugeois, the artful Brabançons—all the varied tribes, in short, of the old Burgundian duchy, seem to vie with each other which shall succeed best in thwarting and humiliating me. And for what do I bear it? What honour or profit shall I reap on my patience? What thanks derive for having wasted my best days and best energies, in bruising with my iron heel the head of the serpent of heresy? Why, even that Philip, for some toy of a mass neglected or an ave forgotten, will perchance give me over to the tender questioning of his grand inquisitor, as the shortest possible answer to my pretensions to a crown,—while the arrogant nobility of Spain, when roused from their apathy towards me by tidings of another Lepanto, a fresh Tunis, will exclaim with modified gratification—'There spoke the blood of Charles the Fifth! Not so ill fought for a bastard!'"

Perceiving that the feelings of his highness were chafed, the courtier, as in vocation bound, assured him he underrated the loyalty towards him of his fellow countrymen of the Peninsula; and that his services as governor of the Low Countries were fully appreciated.

"So fully, that I should be little surprised to learn the axe was already sharpened that is to take off my head!" cried Don John, with a scornful laugh. "And such being the exact state of my feelings and opinions, my trusty Gonzaga, I ask you whether I am likely to have proved a suitable Petrarch for so accomplished a Laura as the sister of Henry III?"—

"I confess myself disappointed," 040replied the crafty Italian.—"I was in hopes that your highness had found recreation as well as glory in Belgium. During my sojourn at the court of Philip, I supported with patience the somewhat ceremonious gravity of the Escurial, in the belief that your highness was enjoying meanwhile those festal enlivenments, which none more fully understand how to organize and adorn."

"If such an expectation really availed to enliven the Escurial," cried Don John recklessly, "your friendship must indeed possess miraculous properties! However, you may judge with your own eyes the pleasantness of my position; and every day that improves your acquaintance with the ill blood and ill condition of this accursed army of the royalists, ill-paid, ill-disciplined, and ill-intentioned, will inspire you with stronger yearnings after our days of the Mediterranean, where I was master of myself and of my men."

"And all this was manifested to Margaret, and all this will serve to comfort the venomous heart of the queen mother!"—ejaculated Gonzaga, shrugging his shoulders.

"Not a syllable, not a circumstance! The Queen of Navarre was far too much engrossed by the manoeuvres of her own bright eyes, to take heed of those of my camp."

"Your highness is perhaps less well aware than might be desirable, of how many things a woman's eyes are capable of doing, at one and the same time!"—retorted the Italian.

"I only wish," cried Don John impatiently, "that instead of having occasion to read me those Jeremiads, you had been here to witness the friendship you so strangely exaggerate! A ball, an excursion on the Meuse, a boar hunt in the forest of Marlagne, constitute the pastimes you are pleased to magnify into an imperial ovation."

"Much may be confided amid the splendour of a ball-room,—much in one poor half hour of a greenwood rendezvous!"—persisted the provoking Ottavio.

"Ay—much indeed!" responded Don John, with a sigh so deep that it startled by its significance the attention of his brother in arms. "But not to such a woman as the Queen of Henri the Béarnais!" returned the Prince. "By our Lady of Liesse! I wish no worse to that heretic prince, than to have placed his honour in the keeping of the gente Margot."

Fain would Gonzaga have pursued the conversation, which had taken a turn that promised wonders for the interest of the despatches he had undertaken to forward to the Escurial, in elucidation of the designs and sentiments of Don John,—towards whom his allegiance was as the kisses of Judas! But the imperial scion, (who, when he pleased, could assume the unapproachability of the blood royal,) made it apparent that he was no longer in a mood to be questioned. Having proposed to the new-comer (to whom, as an experienced commander, he destined the colonelship of his cavalry,) that they should proceed to a survey of the fortifications at Bouge, they mounted their horses, and, escorted by Nignio di Zuniga, the Spanish aide-de-camp of the prince, proceeded to the camp.

The affectionate deference testified towards the young governor by all classes, the moment he made his appearance in public, appeared to Gonzaga strangely in contradiction with the declarations of Don John that he was no favourite in Belgium. The Italian forgot that the Duke of Arschot, the Counts of Mansfeld and Barlaimont, while doffing their caps to the representative of the King of Spain, had as much right to behold in him the devoted friend of Don John of Austria, as he to regard them as the faithful vassals of his government.

A fair country is the country of Namur!—The confluent streams—the impending rocks—the spreading forests of its environs, comprehend the finest features of landscape; nor could Ottavio Gonzaga feel surprised that his prince should find as much more pleasure in those breesy plains than in the narrow streets of Brussels, as he found security and strength.

On the rocks overhanging the Meuse, at some distance from the town, stands the village of Bouge, fortified by Don John; to attain which by land, hamlets and thickets were to be traversed; and it was pleasant 041to see the Walloon peasant children run forth from the cottages to salute the royal train, making their heavy Flemish chargers swerve aside and perform their lumbering cabrioles far more deftly than the cannonading of the rebels, to which they were almost accustomed.

As they cut across a meadow formed by the windings of the Meuse, they saw at a distance a group formed, like most groups congregated just then in the district, of soldiers and peasants; to which the attention of the prince being directed, Nignio di Zuniga, his aide-de-camp, was dispatched to ascertain the cause of the gathering.

"A nothing, if it please your highness!" was the reply of the Spaniard—galloping back, hat in hand, with its plumes streaming in the breeze;—that the Prince's train, which had halted, might resume its pace.

"But a nothing of what sort?" persisted Don John, who appreciated the trivialties of life very differently from those by whom he was surrounded.

"A village grievance!—An old woman roaring her lungs out for a cow which has been carried off by our troopers!"—grumbled the aide-de-camp, with less respect than was usual to him.

"And call you that a nothing?"—exclaimed his master. "By our lady of Liesse, it is an act of cruelty and oppression—a thing calculated to make us hateful in the eyes of the village!—And many villages, my good Nignio, represent districts, and many districts provinces, and provinces a country; and by an accumulation of such resentments as the indignation of this old crone, will the King of Spain and the Catholic faith be driven out of Flanders!—See to it! I want no further attendance of you this morning! Let the cow be restored before sunset, and the marauders punished."

"But if, as will likely prove the case, the beast is no longer in its skin?"—demanded the aide-de-camp. "If the cow should have been already eaten, in a score of messes of pottage?"

"The money chest at headquarters, if it please your highness, is all but empty," replied Nignio, glancing with a smile towards Gonzaga,—as though they were accustomed to jest together over the reckless openness of heart and hand of their young chief.

"Then, by the blessed shrine of St Jago, give the fellows at least the strappado," cried Don John, out of all patience. "Since restitution may not be, be the retribution all the heavier."

"It is ever thus," cried he, addressing himself to Gonzaga, as the aide-de-camp resumed his plumed beaver, and galloped off with an imprecation between his lips, at having so rustic a duty on his hands, instead of accompanying the parade of his royal master. "It goes against my conscience to decree the chastisement of these fellows. For i' faith, they that fight, must feed; and hunger, that eats through stone walls, is apt to have a nibble at honesty. My royal brother, or those who have the distribution of his graces, is so much more liberal of edicts and anathemas than of orders on the treasury of Spain, that money and rations are evermore wanting. If these Protestants persist in their stand against us, I shall have to go forth to all the Catholic cities of the empire, preaching, like Peter the hermit, to obtain contributions from the pious!"

"His Majesty is perhaps of opinion," observed Gonzaga, "that rebels and heretics ought to supply the maintenance of the troops sent to reduce them to submission."

"A curious mode of engaging their affections towards either the creed or prince from which they have revolted!" cried Don John. "But you say true, Ottavio. Such are precisely the instructions of my royal brother; whom the Almighty soften with a more Christian spirit in his upholding of the doctrines of Christianity!—I am bidden to regard myself as in a conquered country. I am bidden to feel myself as I may have felt at Modon or Lepanto. It may not be, it may not be!—These people were the loyal subjects of my forefathers. These people are the faithful followers of Christ."

"Let us trust that the old woman may get back her cow, and your highness's tender conscience stand absolved,"—observed Gonzaga with a smile of ill-repressed derision. "I 042fear, indeed, that the Court of the Escurial is unprepared with sympathy for such grievances."

"Gonzaga!"—exclaimed Don John, suddenly reining up his horse, and looking his companion full in the face, "these are black and bitter times; and apt to make kings, princes, nobles, ay, and even prelates, forget that they are men; or rather that there be men in the world beside themselves."—Then allowing his charger to resume its caracolling, to give time to his startled friend to recover from the glow of consciousness burning on his cheek,—he resumed with a less stern inflexion. "It is the vexation of this conviction that hath brought my face to the meagreness and sallow tint that accused the scorching sun of Barbary. I love the rush of battle. The clash of swords or roaring of artillery is music to me. There is joy in contending, life for life, with a traitor, and marshaling the fierce battalions on the field. But the battle done, let the sword be sheathed! The struggle over, let the blood sink into the earth, and the deadly smoke disperse, and give to view once more the peace of heaven!—The petty aggravations of daily strife,—the cold-blooded oppressions of conquest,—the contest with the peasant for his morsel of bread, or with his chaste wife for her fidelity,—are so revolting to my conscience of good and evil, that as the Lord liveth there are moments when I am tempted to resign for ever the music I love so well of drum and trumpet, and betake myself, like my royal father, to some drowsy monastery, to listen to the end of my days to the snuffling of Capuchins!"

Scarce could Ottavio Gonzaga, so recently emancipated from the Escurial, refrain from making the sign of the cross at this heinous declaration!—But he contained himself.—It was his object to work his way still further into the confidence of his royal companion.

"The chief pleasure I derived from the visit of the French princess to Namur," resumed Don John, "was the respite it afforded from the contemplation of such miseries and such aggressions. I was sick at heart of groans and murmurs,—weary of the adjustment of grievances. To behold a woman's face, whereof the eyes were not red with weeping, was something!"—

"And the eyes of the fair Queen of Navarre are said to be of the brightest!" observed Gonzaga with a sneer.

"As God judgeth my soul, I noted not their hue or brightness!" exclaimed Don John. "Her voice was a woman's—her bearing a woman's—her tastes a woman's. And it brought back the memory of better days to hear the silken robes of her train rustling around me, instead of the customary clang of mail; and merry laughs instead of perpetual moans, or the rude oaths of my Walloons!"

"Have out your laugh!" cried Don John. "You had not thought to see the lion of Lepanto converted into so mere a lap-dog!—Is it not so?"

"As little so as I can admit without the disrespect of denial to your highness,"—replied Gonzaga, with a low obeisance. "My smile was occasioned by wonder that one so little skilled in feigning as the royal lion of Lepanto, should even hazard the attempt. There, at least—and there alone—is Don John of Austria certain of defeat!"

"I might, perhaps, waste more time in persuading you that the air of Flanders hath not taught me lying as well as compassion," replied the Infant; "but that yonder green mound is our first redoubt. The lines of Bouge are before you."

Professional discussion now usurped the place of friendly intercourse. On the arrival of the prince, the drums of headquarters beat to arms; and a moment afterwards, Don John was surrounded by his officers; exhibiting, in the issuing of his orders of the day, the able promptitude of one of the first commanders of his time, tempered by the dignified courtesy of a prince of the blood.

Even Ottavio Gonzaga was too much engrossed by the tactical debates carrying on around him, to have further thought of the mysteries into which he was resolved to penetrate.

It was not till the decline of day, that the prince and his état major returned to Namur; invitations having been frankly given by Don John to a 043score of his officers, to an entertainment in honour of the return of his friend.

Amid the jovialty of such an entertainment, Gonzaga entertained little doubt of learning the truth. The rough railleries of such men were not likely to respect so slight a circumvallation as the honour of female reputation; and the glowing vintage of the Moselle and Rhine would bring forth the secret among the bubbles of their flowing tides. And, in truth, scarcely were the salvers withdrawn, when the potations of these mailed carousers produced deep oaths and uproarious laughter; amid which was toasted the name of Margaret, with the enthusiasm due to one of the originators of the massacre of St Bartholomew, from the most Catholic captains of the founder of the Inquisition of Spain.

The admiration due to her beauty, was, however, couched in terms scarcely warranted on the lips of men of honour, even by such frailties as Margaret's; and, to the surprise of Gonzaga, no restraint was imposed by the presence of her imputed lover. It seemed an established thing, that the name of Margaret was a matter of indifference in the ears of Don John!

That very night, therefore, (the banquet being of short continuance as there was to be a field-day at daybreak, under the reviewal of the prince,) Ottavio Gonzaga, more than ever to seek in his conjectures, resolved to address himself for further information to Nignio; to whom he had brought confidential letters from his family in Spain, and who was an ancient brother in arms.

Having made out without much difficulty, the chamber occupied by the Spanish captain, in a tower of the citadel overlooking the valley of the Sambre, there was some excuse for preventing his early rest with a view to the morrow's exercises, in the plea of news from Madrid.

But as the Italian anticipated, ere he had half disburdened his budget of Escurial gossip, Nignio de Zuniga had his own grievances to confide. Uppermost in his mind, was the irritation of having been employed that morning in a cow-hunt; and from execrations on the name of the old woman, enriched with all the blasphemies of a trooper's vocabulary,—it was no difficult matter to glide to the general misdemeanours and malefactions of the sex. For Gabriel Nignio was a man of iron,—bred in camps, with as little of the milk of human kindness in his nature as his royal master King Philip; and it was his devout conviction, that no petticoat should be allowed within ten leagues of any Christian encampment,—and that women were inflicted upon this nether earth, solely for the abasement and contamination of the nobler sex.

"As if that accursed Frenchwoman, and the nest of jays, her maids of honour, were not enough for the penance of an unhappy sinner for the space of a calendar year!"—cried he, still harping upon the old woman.

"The visit of Queen Margaret must indeed have put you to some trouble and confusion," observed Gonzaga carelessly. "From as much as is apparent of your householding, I can scarce imagine how you managed to bestow so courtly a dame here in honour; or with what pastimes you managed to entertain her."

"The sequins of Lepanto and piastres of his holiness were not yet quite exhausted," replied Nignio. "Even the Namurrois came down handsomely. The sister of two French kings, and sister-in-law of the Duke of Lorraine, was a person for even the thick-skulled Walloons to respect. It was not money that was wanting—it was patience. O, these Parisians! Make me monkey-keeper, blessed Virgin, to the beast garden of the Escurial; but spare me for the rest of my days the honour of being seneschal to the finikin household of a queen on her travels!"

Impossible to forbear a laugh at the fervent hatred depicted in the warworn features of the Castilian captain, "I' faith, my clear Nignio," said Gonzaga, "for the squire of so gallant a knight as Don John of Austria, your notions are rather those of Mahound or Termagaunt! What would his highness say, were he to hear you thus bitter against his Dulcinea?"

"His Dulcinea!"—ejaculated the aide-de-camp with a air of disgust. "God 044grant it! For a princess of Valois blood, reared under the teaching of a Medici, had at least the recommendations of nobility and orthodoxy in her favour."

"As was the case when Anna di Mendoça effected the conquest over his boyish affections, so generously pardoned by his royal brother!—But after such proof of the hereditary aspirings of Don John, it would be difficult to persuade me of his highness's derogation."

"Would I could say as much!"—exclaimed Nignio, with a groan. "But such a cow-hunt as mine of this morning, might convince the scepticism of St Thomas!"

"What, in the name of the whole calendar, have the affections of the prince in common with your exploit?" said Gonzaga. "Would you have me infer that the son of Charles V. is enamoured of a dairy wench?"—

"Of worse! of a daughter of the Amalekites!"—cried Nignio—stretching out his widely booted legs, as though it were a relief to him to have disburthened himself of his mystery.

"I have not the honour of understanding you," replied the Italian,—no further versed in Scripture history than was the pleasure of his almoner.

"You are his highness's friend, Gonzaga!" resumed the Spanish captain. "Even among his countrymen, none so near his heart! I have therefore no scruple in acquainting you with a matter, wherein, from the first, I determined to seek your counteraction. Though seemingly but a straw thrown up into the air, I infer from it a most evil predilection on the part of Don John;—fatal to himself, to us, his friends, and to the country he represents in Belgium."

"Nay, now you are serious indeed!" cried his companion, delighted to come to the point. "I was in hopes it was some mere matter of a pair of rosy lips and a flaunting top-knot!"

"I knew it!" interrupted Gonzaga, "I was as prepared for it as for the opening of a fairy legend—'On a time their lived a king and queen'—"

"Will you tell the story, then, or shall I?"—cried Nignio, impatient of his interruption.

"Yourself, my pearl of squires! granting me in the first place your pardon for my ill manners."—

"When Margaret de Valois visited Namur," resumed Nignio, "the best diversions we had to offer to so fair and pious a princess were, first a Te Deum in the cathedral for her safe journey; next, an entertainment of dancing and music at the town hall—and a gallant affair it was, as far as silver draperies, and garlands of roses, and a blaze of light that seemed to threaten the conflagration of the city, may be taken in praise. The queen had brought with her, as with malice prepense, six of the loveliest ladies of honour gracing the court of the Louvre"—

"I knew it!"—again interrupted Gonzaga;—and again did Nignio gravely enquire of him whether (since so well informed) he would be pleased to finish the history in his own way?

"Your pardon! your pardon!" cried the Italian, laying his finger on his lips. "Henceforward I am mute as a carp of the Meuse."

"It afforded, therefore, some mortification to this astutious princess,—this daughter of Herodias, with more than all her mother's cunning and cruelty in her soul,—to perceive that the Spanish warriors, who on that occasion beheld for the first time the assembled nobility of Brabant and Namur, were more struck by the Teutonic charms of these fair-haired daughters of the north, (so antipodal to all we are accustomed to see in our sunburned provinces,) than by the mannered graces of her pleasure-worn Parisian belles."—

"Certain it is," observed Gonzaga, (despite his recent pledge,) "that there is no greater contrast than between our wild-eyed, glowing Andalusians, and the slow-footed, blue-eyed daughters of these northern mists, whose smiles are as moonshine to sunshine!"

"After excess of sunshine, people sometimes prefer the calmer and milder radiance of the lesser light. And I promise you that, at this moment, if there be pillows sleepless yonder in the camp for the sake of 045the costly fragile toys called womankind, those jackasses of lovelorn lads have cause to regret the sojourn of Queen Margaret in Belgium, only as having brought forth from their castles in the Ardennes or the froggeries of the Low Country, the indigenous divinities that I would were at this moment at the bottom of their muddy moats, or of the Sambre flowing under yonder window!"—

Gabriel Nignio de Zuniga half rose from his chair, as a signal for breaking off the communication he was not allowed to pursue in his own way.—Taking counsel of himself, however, he judged that the shorter way was to tell his tale in a shorter manner, so as to set further molestation at defiance.

"In one word," resumed he, with a vivacity of utterance foreign to his Spanish habits of grandiloquence, "at that ball, there appeared among the dancers of the Coranto, exhibited before the tent of state of Queen Margaret, a young girl whose tender years seemed to render the exhibition almost an indiscretion; and whose aerial figure appeared to make her sojourn there, or any other spot on earth a matter of wonder. Her dress was simple, her fair hair streamed on her shoulders. It was one of the angels of your immortal Titian, minus the wings! Such was, at least, the description given me by Don John, to enable me to ascertain among the Namurrois her name and lineage, for the satisfaction (he said) of the queen, whose attention had been fascinated by her beauty."

"And you proceeded, I doubt not, on your errand with all the grace and good-will I saw you put into your commission of this morning?"—cried Gonzaga, laughing.

"And nearly the same result!—My answer to the enquiry of his highness was verbatim the same; that the matter was not worth asking after. This white rose of the Meuse was not so much as of a chapteral-house. Some piece of provincial obscurity that had issued from the shade, to fill a place in the royal Coranto, in consequence of the indisposition of one of the noble daughters of the house of Croy. Still, as in the matter of the cow-hunt, his highness had the malice to persist! And next day, instead of allowing me to attend him in his barging with the royal Cleopatra of this confounded Cydnus of Brabant, I was dispatched into all quarters of Namur to seek out a pretty child with silken hair and laughing eyes, whom some silly grandam had snatched out of its nursery to parade at a royal fête.—Holy St Laurence! how my soul grilled within my skin!—I did, as you may suppose, as much of his highness's pleasure as squared with my own; and had the satisfaction of informing him, on his return, that the bird had fled."—

"I hoped so! But I am not precisely the confessor his highness is likely to select when love constitutes the sin. At all events, the bustle of Margaret's departure for Spa, the care of the royal escort, and the payment of all that decency required us to take upon ourselves of the cost of our hospitality, engrossed my time and thoughts. But the first time the Infant beset me, (as he has doubtless done yourself,) with his chapter of lamentations over the sufferings of Belgium,—the lawlessness of the camp—the former loyalty of the provinces—the tenderness of conscience of the heretics,—and the eligibility of forbearance and peace,—I saw as plain as though the word were inscribed by the burning finger of Satan, that the turkois eyes and flaxen ringlets were the text of all this snivelling humanity!'

"Blessings on the tender consciences of the heretics, who were burning Antwerp and Ghent, and plundering the religious houses and putting their priests to the sword!" ejaculated Gonzaga.

"The exigencies of the hour, however, left little leisure to Don John for the nursing of his infant passion; and a few weeks past, I entertained hopes that, Queen Margaret being safe back at her Louvre, the heart of the Prince was safe back in its place; more especially when he one day proposed to me an exploit savouring more of his days of Lepanto than I had expected at his hands again. Distracted by the false intelligence 046wherewith we were perpetually misled by the Brabançon scouts, Don John determined on a sortie in disguise, towards the intrenchments of the enemy, betwixt the Sambre and Dyle. Rumour of the reinforcements of English troops dispatched to the heretics by Queen Elizabeth at the instance of the diet of Worms, rendered him anxious; and bent upon ascertaining the exact cantonments of Colonel Norris and his Scottish companies, we set forward before daybreak towards the forest of Marlagne, as for a hunting expedition; then exchanging our dresses for the simple suits of civilians at the house of the verderer, made our way across the Sambre towards Gembloux."

"A mad project!—But such were ever the delight of our Quixote!"—cried Gonzaga.

"In this instance, all prospered. We crossed the country without obstacle, mounted on two powerful Mecklenburgers; and before noon, were deep in Brabant. The very rashness of the undertaking seemed to restore to Don John his forgotten hilarity of old! He was like a truant schoolboy, that has cheated his pedagogue of a day's bird-nesting; and eyes more discerning than those of the stultified natives of these sluggish provinces, had been puzzled to detect under the huge patch that blinded him of an eye, and the slashed sleeve of his sad-coloured suit that showed him wounded of an arm, the gallant host of Queen Margaret! 'My soul comes back into me with this gallop across the breezy plain, unencumbered by the trampling of a guard!' cried the Prince. 'There is the making in me yet of another Lepanto! But two provinces remain faithful to our standard: his highness of Orange and the Archduke having filched, one by one, from their allegiance the hearts of these pious Netherlanders; who can no better prove their fear of God than by ceasing to honour the king he hath been pleased to set over them. Nevertheless, with Luxembourg and Namur for our vantage-ground, and under the blessing of his holiness, the banner under which I conquered the infidel, shall, sooner or later, float victorious under this northern sky!'

"Such was the tenour of his discourse as we entered a wood, halfway through which, the itinerary I had consulted informed me we had to cross a branch of the Dyle. But on reaching the ferry-house of this unfrequented track, we found only two sumpter-mules tied to a tree near the hovel, and a boat chained to its stump beside the stream. In answer to our shouts, no vestige of a ferryman appeared; and behold the boat-chain was locked, and the current too deep and strong for fording.

"Where there is smoke there is fire! No boat without a boatman!" cried the Prince; and leaping from his horse, which he gave me to hold, and renewing his vociferations, he was about to enter the ferry-house, when, just as he reached the wooden porch, a young girl, holding her finger to her lips in token of silence, appeared on the threshold!"

"She of the turkois eyes and flaxen ringlets, for a hundred pistoles!"—cried Gonzaga. "Such then was the bird's nest that made him so mad a truant!"

"As she retreated into the house," resumed Nignio, without noticing the interruption, "his highness followed, hat in hand, with the deference due to a gouvernante of Flanders. But as the house was little better than a shed of boards, by drawing a trifle nearer the porch, not a syllable of their mutual explanation escaped me.

"'Are you a follower of Don John?'—was the first demand of the damsel. 'Do you belong to the party of the States?'—the next; to both which questions, a negative was easily returned. After listening to the plea, fluently set forth by the prince, that he was simply a Zealand burgess, travelling on his own errand, and sorely in fear of falling in (God wot) with either Protestants or Papists, the damsel appeared to hail the arrival of so congenial an ally as a blessing; acquainted him with a rash frankness of speech worthy of his own, that she was journeying from the Ardennes towards the frontier of Brabant, where her father was in high command; that the duenna her companion, outwearied by the exercise, was taking her siesta within; for that her pacing nag, having cast a shoe on 047reaching the wood, the ferryman had undertaken to conduct to the nearest smithy the venerable chaplain and serving-man constituting her escort.

"'Half a league from hence,' said she, 'my father's people are in waiting to escort me during the rest of my journey.'

"' Yet surely, gentle lady,' observed the prince, 'considering the military occupation of the province, your present protection is somewhat of the weakest?'—

"'It was expressly so devised by my father,' replied the open-hearted girl. 'The Spanish cavaliers are men of honour, who war not against women and almoners. A more powerful attendance were more likely to provoke animosity. Feebleness is sometimes the best security.'

"'Home is a woman's only security in times like these!'—cried the prince with animation.

"'And therefore to my home am I recalled,' rejoined the young girl, with a heavy sigh. 'Since my mother's death, I have been residing with her sister in the Ardennes. But my good aunt having had the weakness to give way to my instances, and carry me to Namur last summer, to take part in the entertainments offered to the Queen of Navarre, my father has taken offence at both of us; and I am sent for home to be submitted to sterner keeping.'

"You will believe that, ere all this was mutually explained, more time had elapsed than I take in the telling it; and I could perceive by the voices of the speakers that they had taken seats, and were awaiting, without much impatience, the return of the ferryman. The compassion of the silly child was excited by the severe accident which the stranger described as the origin of his fractures and contusions; nor need I tell you that the persuasive voice and deportment of Don John are calculated to make even a more experienced one than this pretty Ulrica forget his unseemly aspect and indigent apparel."

"And all this time the careful gouvernante snored within, and the obsequious aide-de-camp held at the door the bridles of the Mecklenburgers"—

"Precisely. Nor found I the time hang much heavier than the prince; for at first mistrustful, like yourself, that the reconnaissance into which he had beguiled me was a mere pretext, I was not sorry to ascertain, sigh by sigh, and word by word, the grounds on which he stood with the enemy. And you should have heard how artfully he contrived to lead her back to the fêtes of Namur; asking, as with the curiosity of a bumpkin, the whole details of the royal entertainments! No small mind had I to rush in and chuck the hussy into the torrent before me, when I heard the little fiend burst forth into the most genuine and enthusiastic praises of the royal giver of the feast,—'So young, so handsome, so affable, so courteous, so passing the kingliness of kings.' She admitted, moreover, that it was her frantic desire of beholding face to face the hero of Lepanto, which had produced the concession on the part of her kinswoman so severely visited by her father.

"'But surely,' pleaded this thoughtless prattler, 'one may admire the noble deportment of a Papist, and perceive the native goodness beaming in his eyes, without peril of salvation? This whole morning hath my father's chaplain (who will be here anon) been giving scripture warrant that I have no right to importune heaven with my prayers for the conversion of Don John:—Yet, as my good aunt justly observes, the great grandson of Mary of Burgundy has his pedestal firm in our hearts, beyond reach of overthrow from all the preachments of the Reformers'"—

"And you did not fling the bridles to the devil, and rush in to the rescue of the unguarded soldier thus mischievously assailed?"—cried Gonzaga.

"It needed not! The old lady could not sleep for ever; and I had the comfort to hear her rouse herself, and suitably reprehend the want of dignity of her charge in such strange familiarity with strangers. To which the pretty Ulrica replied, 'That it was no fault of hers if people wanted to convert a child into a woman!' A moment afterwards and the ferryman and cortège arrived together; and a more glorious figure 048of fun than the chaplain of the heretic general hath seldom bestridden a pacing nag! However, I was too glad of his arrival to be exceptious; and the whole party were speedily embarked in the ferry, taking their turn as the first arrived at the spot, which we twain abided, watching the punt across the stream, which, in consequence of the strength of the current, it was indispensable to float down some hundred yards, in order to reach the opposite shore.

"Hat in hand stood the prince, his eyes fixed upon the precious freight, and those of Ulrica fixed in return upon her new and pleasant acquaintance; when, Jesu Maria!—as every thing that is evil ordained it,—behold, the newly-shod palfrey of the pretty Brabançonne, irritated, perhaps, by the clumsy veterinaryship of a village smithy, began suddenly to rear and plunge, and set at defiance the old dunderhead by whom it was held!—The ass of a ferryman, in his eagerness to lend his aid, let go his oar into the stream; and between the awkwardness of some and the rashness of others, in a moment the whole party were carried round by the eddy of the Dyle!—The next, and Ulrica was struggling in the waters"—

"You know him too well not to foresee all that follows. Take for granted, therefore, the tedious hours spent at the ferry-house, in restoring to consciousness the exhausted women, half-dead with cold and fright. Under the unguarded excitement of mind produced by such an incident, I expected indeed every moment the self-betrayal of my companion; but that evil we escaped. And when, late in the evening, the party was sufficiently recovered to proceed, I was agreeably surprised to find that Don John was alive to the danger of escorting the fair Ulrica even so far as the hamlet, where her father's people were in waiting."

"The certainty of falling in with the troopers of Horn, rendered it expedient for us to return to Namur with only half the object of his highness accomplished. But the babble of the old chaplain had acquainted us with nearly all we wanted to know,— namely, the number and disposal of the Statists, and the position taken up by the English auxiliaries."

"Was a parting as between friends for life! The first had been the laughing farewell of pleasant acquaintance. But now, ere she bade adieu to the gallant preserver of her life, she shred a tress of her silken hair, still wet with the waters of the Dyle, which she entreated him to keep for her sake. In return, he placed upon her finger the ruby presented to him by the Doge of Venice, bearing the arms of the republic engraved on the setting; telling her that chance had enabled him to confer an obligation on the governor of the Netherlands; and that, in any strait or peril, that signet, dispatched in his name to Don John of Austria, would command his protection."

"As I live, a choice romance!—almost worthy the pages of our matchless Boccaccio!" cried the Italian. "A thousand pities but that the whole batch of Orangeists had been carried down the Dyle!—However, the enemy's lines lie between them. They will meet no more. The Calvinist colonel has doubtless his daughter under lock and key; and his highness has too much work cut out for him by his rebels, to have time for peeping through the keyhole.—So now, good-night.—For love-tales are apt to beget drowsiness; and i'faith we must be a-foot by break of day."

And having betaken himself to the chamber provided for him, Ottavio Gonzaga lost not an hour or a syllable, in transcribing all he had learned from the Spanish aide-de-camp; that the state of mind and feeling of the young viceroy might be speedily laid open to the full and uncongenial investigation of his royal brother of the Escurial. 049

Part II.

A fortnight afterwards, was fought that famous battle of Gembloux, which added a new branch to the laurels of Don John of Austria; and constitutes a link of the radiant chain of military glories which binds the admiration of Europe to the soil of one of the obscurest of its countries!—Gembloux, Ramillies, Nivelle, Waterloo, lie within the circuit of a morning's journey, as well as within the circle of eternal renown.

By this brilliant triumph of the royalists, six thousand men-at-arms, their standards, banners, and artillery, were lost to the States. The cavalry of Spain, under the command of Ottavio Gonzaga, performed prodigies of valour; and the vanguard, under that of Gaspardo Nignio, equally distinguished itself. But the heat of the action fell upon the main body of the army, which had marched from Namur under the command of Don John; being composed of the Italian reinforcements dispatched to him from Parma by desire of the Pope, under the command of his nephew, Prince Alexander Farnese.

It was noticed, however, with surprise, that when the generals of the States—the Archduke Matthias, and Prince of Orange—retreated in dismay to Antwerp, Don John, instead of pursuing his advantage with the energy of his usual habits, seemed to derive little satisfaction or encouragement from his victory. It might be, that the difficulty of controlling the predatory habits of the German and Burgundian troops wearied his patience; for scarce a day passed but there issued some new proclamation, reproving the atrocious rapacity and lawless desperation of the army. But neither Gonzaga nor Nignio had much opportunity of judging of the real cause of his cheerlessness; for, independent of the engrossing duties of their several commands, the leisure of Don John was entirely bestowed upon his nephew, Alexander Farnese, who, only a few years his junior in age, was almost a brother in affection.

To him alone were confided the growing cares of his charge—the increasing perplexities of his mind. To both princes, the name of Ulrica had become, by frequent repetition, a sacred word; and though Don John had the comfort of knowing that her father, the Count de Cergny, was unengaged in the action of Gembloux, his highness had reason to fear that the regiment of Hainaulters under his command, constituted the garrison of one or other of the frontier fortresses of Brabant, to which it was now his duty to direct the conquering arms of his captains.

The army of the States having taken refuge within the walls of Antwerp, the royalists, instead of marching straight to Brussels, according to general expectation, effected in the first instance the reduction of Tirlemont, Louvain, D'Arschot, Sichem, and Diest,—Nivelle, the capital of Walloon Brabant, next succumbed to their arms—Maubeuge, Chimay, Barlaimont;—and, after a severe struggle, the new and beautiful town of Philippeville.

But these heroic feats were not accomplished without a tremendous carnage, and deeds of violence at which the soul sickened. At Sichem, the indignation of the Burgundians against a body of French troops which, after the battle of Gembloux, had pledged itself never again to bear arms against Spain, caused them to have a hundred soldiers strangled by night, and their bodies flung into the moat at the foot of the citadel; after which the town was given up by Prince Alexander to pillage and spoliation! Terrified by such an example, Diest and Leeuw hastened to capitulate. And still, at every fresh conquest, and while receiving day after day, and week after week, the submission of fortresses, and capitulation of vanquished chiefs, the anxious expectation entertained by Don John of an appeal to his clemency accompanying the Venetian ring, was again and again disappointed!—

At times, his anxieties on Ulrica's account saddened him into utter despondency. He felt convinced that mischance had overtaken her. All 050his endeavours to ascertain the position of the Count de Cergny having availed him nothing, he trusted that the family must be shut up in Antwerp, with the Prince of Orange and Archduke; but when every night, ere he retired to a soldier's rugged pillow, and pressed his lips to that long fair tress which seemed to ensure the blessings of an angel of purity and peace, the hopes entertained by Don John of tidings of the gentle Ulrica became slighter and still more slight.

He did not the more refrain from issuing such orders and exacting such interference on the part of Alexander Farnese, as promised to secure protection and respect to the families of all such officers of the insurgent army as might, in any time or place, fall into the hands of the royalists.

To Alexander, indeed, to whom his noble kinsman was scarcely less endeared by his chivalrous qualities than the ties of blood, and who was fully aware of the motive of these instructions, the charge was almost superfluous. So earnest were, from the first, his orders to his Italian captains to pursue in all directions their enquiries after the Count de Cergny and his family, that it had become a matter of course to preface their accounts of the day's movements with—"No intelligence, may it please your highness, of the Count de Cergny!"

The siege of Limbourg, however, now wholly absorbed his attention; for it was a stronghold on which the utmost faith was pinned by the military science of the States. But a breach having been made in the walls by the Spanish artillery under the command of Nicolo di Cesi, the cavalry, commanded in person by the Prince Alexander, and the Walloons under Nignio di Zuniga, speedily forced an entrance; when, in spite of the stanch resistance of the governor, the garrison laid down their arms, and the greater portion of the inhabitants took the oath of fealty to the king.

Of all his conquests, this was the least expected and most desirable; in devout conviction of which, the Prince of Parma commanded a Te Deum to be sung in the churches, and hastened to render thanks to the God of Battles for an event by which further carnage was spared to either host.

Escorted by his état major, he had proceeded to the cathedral to join in the august solemnization; when, lo! just as he quitted the church, a way-worn and heated cavalier approached, bearing despatches; in whom the prince recognised a faithful attendant of his household, named Paolo Rinaldo, whom he had recently sent with instructions to Camille Du Mont, the general charged with the reduction of the frontier fortresses of Brabant.

"Be their blood upon their head!" was the spontaneous ejaculation of the prince, after perusing the despatch. Then, turning to the officers by whom he was escorted, he explained, in a few words, that the fortress of Dalem, which had replied to the propositions to surrender of Du Mont only by the scornful voice of its cannon, had been taken by storm by the Burgundians, and its garrison put to the sword.

"Time that some such example taught a lesson to these braggarts of Brabant!"—responded Nignio, who stood at the right hand of Prince Alexander. "The nasal twang of their chaplains seems of late to have overmastered, in their ears, the eloquence of the ordnance of Spain! Yet, i'faith, they might be expected to find somewhat more unction in the preachments of our musketeers than the homilies of either Luther or Calvin!"

He spoke unheeded of the prince; for Alexander was now engaged apart in a colloquy with his faithful Rinaldo, who had respectfully placed in his hands a ring of great cost and beauty.

"Seeing the jewel enchased with the arms of the Venetian republic, may it please your highness," said the soldier, "I judged it better to remit it to your royal keeping."

"And from whose was it plundered?" cried the prince, with a sudden flush of emotion.

"From hands that resisted not!" replied Rinaldo gravely. "I took it from the finger of the dead!"

"And when, and where?"—exclaimed the prince, drawing him still further apart, and motioning to his train to resume their march to the States' house of Limbourg.

"The tale is long and grievous, may it please your highness!" said Rinaldo. "To comprise it in the 051fewest words, know that, after seeing the governor of Dalem cut down in a brave and obstinate defence of the banner of the States floating from the walls of his citadel, I did my utmost to induce the Baron de Cevray, whose Burgundians carried the place, to proclaim quarter. For these fellows of Hainaulters, (who, to do them justice, had fought like dragons,) having lost their head, were powerless; and of what use hacking to pieces an exhausted carcass?—But our troops were too much exasperated by the insolent resistance and defiance they had experienced, to hear of mercy; and soon the conduits ran blood, and shrieks and groans rent the air more cruelly than the previous roar of the artillery. In accordance, however, with the instructions I have ever received from your highness, I pushed my way into all quarters, opposing what authority I might to the brutality of the troopers."

"Quick, quick!"—cried Prince Alexander in anxious haste—"Let me not suppose that the wearer of this ring fell the victim of such an hour?"—

It was in passing the open doors of the church that my ears were assailed with cries of female distresses:—nor could I doubt that even that sanctuary (held sacred by our troops of Spain!) had been invaded by the impiety of the German or Burgundian legions!—As usual, the chief ladies of the town had placed themselves under the protection of the high altar. But there, even there, had they been seized by sacrilegious hands!—The fame of the rare beauty of the daughter of the governor of Dalem, had attracted, among the rest, two daring ruffians of the regiment of Cevray."

"You sacrificed them, I trust in GOD, on the spot?"—demanded the prince, trembling with emotion. "You dealt upon them the vengeance due?"

"Alas! sir, the vengeance they were mutually dealing, had already cruelly injured the helpless object of the contest! Snatched from the arms of the Burgundian soldiers by the fierce arm of a German musketeer, a deadly blow, aimed at the ruffian against whom she was wildly but vainly defending herself; had lighted on one of the fairest of human forms! Cloven to the bone, the blood of this innocent being, scarce past the age of childhood, was streaming on her assailants; and when, rushing in, I proclaimed, in the name of God and of your highness, quarter and peace, it was an insensible body I rescued from the grasp of pollution!"

"Not altogether hopeless," resumed Rinaldo; "and apprized, by the sorrowful ejaculations of her female companions when relieved from their personal fears, of the high condition of the victim, I bore the insensible lady to the hospital of Dalem; and the utmost skill of our surgeons was employed upon her wounds. Better had it been spared!—The dying girl was roused only to the endurance of more exquisite torture; and while murmuring a petition for 'mercy—mercy to her father!' that proved her still unconscious of her family misfortunes, she attempted in vain to take from her finger the ring I have had the honour to deliver to your highness:—faltering with her last breath, 'for his sake, Don John will perhaps show mercy to my poor old father!'"—

"Return in all haste to Dalem, Rinaldo," rejoined the prince, "and complete your work of mercy, by seeing all honours of interment that the times admit, bestowed on the daughter of the Comte de Cergny!"

Weary and exhausted as he was, not a murmur escaped the lips of the faithful Rinaldo as he mounted his horse, and hastened to the discharge of his new duty. For though habituated by the details of that cruel and desolating warfare to spectacles of horror—the youth—the beauty—the innocence—the agonies of Ulrica, had touched him to the heart; nor was the tress of her fair hair worn next the heart of Don John of Austria, more fondly treasured, than the one this rude soldier had shorn from the brow of death, in the ward of a public hospital, albeit its silken gloss was tinged with blood!— 052 Scarcely a month had elapsed after the storming of Dalem, when a terrible rumour went forth in the camp of Bouge, (where Don John had intrenched his division of the royalist army,) that the governor of the Netherlands was attacked by fatal indisposition!—For some weeks past, indeed, his strength and spirit had been declining. When at the village of Rymenam on the Dyle, near Mechlin, (not far from the ferry of the wood,) he suffered himself to be surprised by the English troops under Horn, and the Scotch under Robert Stuart, the unusual circumstance of the defeat of so able a general was universally attributed to prostration of bodily strength.

When it was soon afterwards intimated to the army that he had ceded the command to his nephew, Prince Alexander Farnese, regret for the origin of his secession superseded every other consideration.

For the word had gone forth that he was to die!—In the full vigour of his manhood and energy of his soul, a fatal blow had reached Don John of Austria!—

A vague but horrible accusation of poison was generally prevalent!—For his leniency towards the Protestants had engendered a suspicion of heresy, and the orthodoxy of Philip II. was known to be remorseless; and the agency of Ottavio Gonzaga at hand!—

But the kinsman who loved and attended him knew better. From the moment Prince Alexander beheld the ring of Ulrica glittering on his wasted hand, he entertained no hope of his recovery; and every time he issued from the tent of Don John, and noted the groups of veterans praying on their knees for the restoration of the son of their emperor, and heard the younger soldiers calling aloud in loyal affection upon the name of the hero of Lepanto, tears came into his eyes as he passed on to the discharge of his duties. For he knew that their intercessions were in vain—that the hours of the sufferer were numbered. In a moment of respite from his sufferings, the sacraments of the church were administered to the dying prince; having received which with becoming humility, he summoned around him the captains of the camp, and exhorted them to zeal in the service of Spain, and fidelity to his noble successor in command.

It was the 1st of October, the anniversary of the action of Lepanto, and on a glorious autumnal day of golden sunshine, that, towards evening, he ordered the curtains of his tent to be drawn aside, that he might contemplate for the last time the creation of God!—

Raising his head proudly from a soldier's pillow, he uttered in hoarse but distinct accents his last request, that his body might be borne to Spain, and buried at the feet of his father. For his eyes were fixed upon the glories of the orb of day, and his mind upon the glories of the memory of one of the greatest of kings.

But that pious wish reflected the last flash of human reason in his troubled mind. His eyes became suddenly inflamed with fever, his words incoherent, his looks haggard. Having caused them to sound the trumpets at the entrance of his tent, as for an onset, he ranged his battalions for an imaginary field of battle, and disposed his manoeuvres, and gave the word to charge against the enemy.¹⁸ Then, sinking back upon his pillow, he breathed in subdued accents, "Let me at least avenge her innocent blood. Why, why could I not save thee, my Ulrica!"—

It was thus he died. When Nignio de Zuniga (cursing in his heart with a fourfold curse the heretics whom he chose to consider the murderers of his master) stooped down to lay his callous hand on the heart of the hero, the pulses of life were still!—

There was but one cry throughout the camp—there was but one thought among his captains:—"Let the bravest knight of Christendom be laid nobly in the grave!" Attired in the suit of mail in which he had fought at Lepanto, the body was placed on a bier, and borne forth from his tent on the shoulders of the officers of his household. Then, having been saluted by the respect of the whole army, it was 053transmitted from post to post through the camp, on those of the colonels of the regiments of all nations constituting the forces of Spain.—And which of them was to surmise, that upon the heart of the dead lay the love-token of a heretic?—A double line of troops, infantry and cavalry in alternation, formed a road of honour from the camp of Bouge to the gates of the city of Namur. And when the people saw, borne upon his bier amid the deferential silence of those iron soldiers, bareheaded and with their looks towards the earth, the gallant soldier so untimely stricken, arrayed in his armour of glory and with a crown upon his head, after the manner of the princes of Burgundy, and on his finger the ruby ring of the Doge of Venice, they thought upon his knightly qualities—his courtesy, generosity, and valour—till all memory of his illustrious parentage became effaced. They forgot the prince in the man,—"and behold all Israel mourned for Jonathan!"

A regiment of infantry, trailing their halberts, led the march, till they reached Namur, where the precious deposit was remitted by the royalist generals, Mansfeldt, Villefranche, and La Cros, to the hands of the chief magistrates of Namur. By these it was bourne in state to the cathedral of St Alban; and during the celebration of a solemn mass, deposited at the foot of the high altar till the pleasure of Philip II. should be known concerning the fulfilment of the last request of Don John.

It was by Ottavio Gonzaga the tidings of his death were conveyed to Spain. It was by Ottavio Gonzaga the king intimated, in return, his permission that the conqueror of Lepanto should share the sepulture of Charles V., and all that now remains to Namur in memory of one of the last of Christian knights, the Maccabeus of the Turkish hosts, who expired in its service and at its gates, is an inscription placed on its high altar by the piety of Alexander Farnese, intimating that it afforded a temporary resting place to the remains of DON JOHN of AUSTRIA.¹⁹

POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE.

No. I.

It may be as well to state at the outset, that we have not the most distant intention of laying before the public the whole mass of poetry that flowed from the prolific pen of Goethe, betwixt the days of his student life at Leipsic and those of his final courtly residence at Weimar. It is of no use preserving the whole wardrobe of the dead; we do enough if we possess ourselves of his valuables—articles of sterling bullion that will at any time command their price in the market—as to worn-out and threadbare personalities, the sooner they are got rid of the better. Far be it from us, however, to depreciate or detract from the merit of any of Goethe's productions. Few men have written so voluminously, and still fewer have written so well. But the curse of a most fluent pen, and of a numerous auditory, to whom his words were oracles, was upon him; and seventy volumes, more or less, which Cotta issued from his wareroom, are for the library of the Germans now, and for the selection of judicious editors hereafter. A long time must elapse after an author's death, before we can pronounce with perfect certainty what belongs to the trunk-maker, and what pertains to posterity. Happy the man—if not in his own generation, yet most assuredly in the time to come—whose natural hesitation or fastidiousness has prompted him to weigh his words maturely, before launching them forth into the great ocean of literature, in the midst of which is a Maelstrom of tenfold absorbing power!

From the minor poems, therefore, of Goethe, we propose, in the present series, to select such as are most esteemed by competent judges, including, of course, ourselves. We shall not follow the example of dear old Eckermann, nor preface our specimens by any critical remarks upon the scope and tendency of the great German's genius; neither shall we divide his works, as characteristic of his intellectual progress, into eras or into epochs; still less shall we attempt to institute a regular comparison between his merits and those of Schiller, whose finest productions (most worthily translated) have already enriched the pages of this Magazine. We are doubtless ready at all times to back our favourite against the field, and to maintain his intellectual superiority even against his greatest and most formidable rival. We know that he is the showiest, and we feel convinced that he is the better horse of the two; but talking is worse than useless when the course is cleared, and the start about to commence.

Come forward, then, before the British public, O many-sided, ambidextrous Goethe, as thine own Thomas Carlyle might, or could, or would, or should have termed thee, and let us hear how the mellifluous Teutonic verse will sound when adapted to another tongue. And, first of all—for we yearn to know it—tell us how thy inspiration came? A plain answer, of course, we cannot expect—that were impossible from a German; but such explanation as we can draw from metaphor and oracular response, seems to be conveyed in that favourite and elaborate preface to the poems, which accordingly we may term the

INTRODUCTION.

The morning came. Its footsteps scared away

The gentle sleep that hover'd lightly o'er me;

I left my quiet cot to greet the day

And gaily climb'd the mountain-side before me.

The sweet young flowers! how fresh were they and tender,

Brimful with dew upon the sparkling lea;

The young day open'd in exulting splendour,

And all around seem'd glad to gladden me. 055

And, as I mounted, o'er the meadow ground

A white and filmy essence 'gan to hover;

It sail'd and shifted till it hemm'd me round,

Then rose above my head, and floated over.

No more I saw the beauteous scene unfolded—

It lay beneath a melancholy shroud;

And soon was I, as if in vapour moulded,

Alone, within the twilight of the cloud.

At once, as though the sun were struggling through,

Within the mist a sudden radiance started;

Here sunk the vapour, but to rise anew,

There on the peak and upland forest parted.

O, how I panted for the first clear gleaming,

That after darkness must be doubly bright!

It came not, but a glory round me beaming,

And I stood blinded by the gush of light.

A moment, and I felt enforced to look,

By some strange impulse of the heart's emotion;

But more than one quick glance I scarce could brook,

For all was burning like a molten ocean.

There, in the glorious clouds that seem'd to bear her,

A form angelic hover'd in the air;

Ne'er did my eyes behold vision fairer,

And still she gazed upon me, floating there.

"Do'st thou not know me?" and her voice was soft

As truthful love, and holy calm it sounded.

"Know'st thou not me, who many a time and oft,

Pour'd balsam in thy hurts when sorest wounded?

Ah well thou knowest her, to whom for ever

Thy heart in union pants to be allied!

Have I not seen the tears—the wild endeavour

That even in boyhood brought thee to my side?"

"Yes! I have felt thy influence oft," I cried,

And sank on earth before her, half-adoring;

"Thou brought'st me rest when Passion's lava tide

Through my young veins like liquid fire was pouring.

And thou hast fann'd, as with celestial pinions,

In summer's heat my parch'd and fever'd brow;

Gav'st me the choicest gifts of earth's dominions,

And, save through thee, I seek no fortune now.

"I name thee not, but I have heard thee named,

And heard thee styled their own ere now by many;

All eyes believe at thee their glance is aim'd,

Though thine effulgence is too great for any.

Ah! I had many comrades whilst I wander'd—

I know thee now, and stand almost alone:

I veil thy light, too precious to be squander'd,

And share the inward joy I feel with none."

Smiling, she said—"Thou see'st 'twas wise from thee

To keep the fuller, greater revelation:

Scarce art thou from grotesque delusions free,

Scarce master of thy childish first sensation;

Yet deem'st thyself so far above thy brothers,

That thou hast won the right to scorn them! Cease. 056

Who made the yawning gulf 'twixt thee and others?

Know—know thyself—live with the world in peace."

"Forgive me!" I exclaim'd, "I meant no ill,

Else should in vain my eyes be disenchanted;

Within my blood there stirs a genial will—

I know the worth of all that thou hast granted.

That boon I hold in trust for others merely,

Nor shall I let it rust within the ground;

Why sought I out the pathway so sincerely,

If not to guide my brothers to the bound?"

And as I spoke, upon her radiant face

Pass'd a sweet smile, like breath across a mirror;

And in her eyes' bright meaning I could trace

What I had answer'd well and what in error,

She smiled, and then my heart regain'd its lightness,

And bounded in my breast with rapture high:

Then durst I pass within her zone of brightness,

And gaze upon her with unquailing eye.

Straightway she stretch'd her hand among the thin

And watery haze that round her presence hover'd;

Slowly it coil'd and shrunk her grasp within,

And lo! the landscape lay once more uncover'd—

Again mine eye could scan the sparkling meadow,

I look'd to heaven, and all was clear and bright;

I saw her hold a veil without a shadow,

That undulated round her in the light.

"I know thee!—all thy weakness, all that yet

Of good within thee lives and glows, I've measured;"

She said—her voice I never may forget—

"Accept the gift that long for thee was treasured.

Oh! happy he, thrice-bless'd in earth and heaven,

Who takes this gift with soul serene and true,

The veil of song, by Truth's own fingers given,

Enwoven of sunshine and the morning dew.

"Wave but this veil on high, whene'er beneath

The noonday fervour thou and thine are glowing,

And fragrance of all flowers around shall breathe,

And the cool winds of eve come freshly blowing.

Earth's cares shall cease for thee, and all its riot;

Where gloom'd the grave, a starry couch be seen;

The waves of life shall sink in halcyon quiet;

The days be lovely fair, the nights serene."

Come then, my friends, and whether 'neath the load

Of heavy griefs ye struggle on, or whether

Your better destiny shall strew the road

With flowers, and golden fruits that cannot wither,

United let us move, still forwards striving;

So while we live shall joy our days illume,

And in our children's hearts our love surviving

Shall gladden them, when we are in the tomb.

This is a noble metaphysical and metaphorical poem, but purely German of its kind. It has been imitated, not to say travestied, at least fifty times, by crazy students and purblind professors—each of whom, in turn, has had an 057interview with the goddess of nature upon a hill-side. For our own part, we confess that we have no great predilection for such mysterious intercourse, and would rather draw our inspiration from tangible objects, than dally with a visionary Egeria. But the fault is both common and national.

The next specimen we shall offer is the far-famed Bride of Corinth. Mrs Austin says of this poem very happily—"An awful and undefined horror breathes throughout it. In the slow measured rhythm of the verse, and the pathetic simplicity of the diction, there is a solemnity and a stirring spell, which chains the feelings like a deep mysterious strain of music." Owing to the peculiar structure and difficulty of the verse, this poem has hitherto been supposed incapable of translation. Dr Anster, who alone has rendered it into English, found it necessary to depart from the original structure; and we confess that it was not without much labour, and after repeated efforts, that we succeeded in vanquishing the obstacle of the double rhymes. If the German scholar should perceive, that in three stanzas some slight liberties have been taken with the original, we trust that he will perceive the reason, and at least give us credit for general fidelity and close adherence to the text.

THE BRIDE OF CORINTH.

A youth to Corinth, whilst the city slumber'd,

Came from Athens: though a stranger there,

Soon among its townsmen to be number'd,

For a bride awaits him, young and fair:

From their childhood's years

They were plighted feres,

So contracted by their parents' care.

II.

But may not his welcome there be hinder'd?

Dearly must he buy it, would he speed.

He is still a heathen with his kindred,

She and her's wash'd in the Christian creed.

When new faiths are born,

Love and troth are torn

Rudely from the heart, howe'er it bleed.

III.

All the house is hush'd. To rest retreated

Father, daughters—not the mother quite;

She the guest with cordial welcome greeted,

Led him to a room with tapers bright;

Wine and food she brought

Ere of them he thought,

Then departed with a fair good-night.

IV.

But he felt no hunger, and unheeded

Left the wine, and eager for the rest

Which his limbs, forspent with travel, needed,

On the couch he laid him, still undress'd.

There he sleeps—when lo!

Onwards gliding slow,

At the door appears a wondrous guest.

By the waning lamp's uncertain gleaming

There he sees a youthful maiden stand,

Robed in white, of still and gentle seeming,

On her brow a black and golden band.

When she meets his eyes,

With a quick surprise

Starting, she uplifts a pallid hand.

VI.

"Is a stranger here, and nothing told me?

Am I then forgotten even in name?

Ah! 'tis thus within my cell they hold me,

And I now am cover'd o'er with shame!

Pillow still thy head

There upon thy bed,

I will leave thee quickly as I came."

VII.

"Maiden—darling! Stay, O stay!" and, leaping

From the couch, before her stands the boy:

"Ceres—Bacchus, here their gifts are heaping,

And thou bringest Amor's gentle joy!

Why with terror pale?

Sweet one, let us hail

These bright gods—their festive gifts employ."

VIII.

"Oh, no—no! Young stranger, come not nigh me;

Joy is not for me, nor festive cheer.

Ah! such bliss may ne'er be tasted by me,

Since my mother, in fantastic fear,

By long sickness bow'd,

To heaven's service vow'd

Me, and all the hopes that warm'd me here.

IX.

"They have left our hearth, and left it lonely—

The old gods, that bright and jocund train.

One, unseen, in heaven, is worshipp'd only,

And upon the cross a Saviour slain;

Sacrifice is here,

Not of lamb nor steer,

But of human woe and human pain."

And he asks, and all her words cloth ponder—

"Can it be, that, in this silent spot,

I behold thee, thou surpassing wonder!

My sweet bride, so strangely to me brought?

Be mine only now—

See, our parents' vow

Heaven's good blessing hath for us besought."

XI.

"No! thou gentle heart," she cried in anguish;

"'Tis not mine, but 'tis my sister's place;

When in lonely cell I weep and languish,

Think, oh think of me in her embrace!

I think but of thee—

Pining drearily,

Soon beneath the earth to hide my face!"

XII.

"Nay! I swear by yonder flame which burneth,

Fann'd by Hymen, lost thou shalt not be;

Droop not thus, for my sweet bride returneth

To my father's mansion back with me!

Dearest! tarry here!

Taste the bridal cheer,

For our spousal spread so wondrously!"

XIII.

Then with word and sign their troth they plighted.

Golden was the chain she bade him wear;

But the cup he offer'd her she slighted,

Silver, wrought with cunning past compare.

"That is not for me;

All I ask of thee

Is one little ringlet of thy hair."

XIV.

Dully boom'd the midnight hour unhallow'd,

And then first her eyes began to shine;

Eagerly with pallid lips she swallow'd

Hasty draughts of purple-tinctured wine;

But the wheaten bread,

As in shuddering dread,

Put she always by with loathing sign.

XV.

And she gave the youth the cup: he drain'd it,

With impetuous haste he drain'd it dry;

Love was in his fever'd heart, and pain'd it,

Till it ached for joys she must deny.

But the maiden's fears

Stay'd him, till in tears

On the bed he sank, with sobbing cry.

XVI.

And she leans above him—"Dear one, still thee!

Ah, how sad am I to see thee so!

But, alas! these limbs of mine would chill thee:

Love, they mantle not with passion's glow;

Thou wouldst be afraid,

Didst thou find the maid

Thou hast chosen, cold as ice or snow."

XVII.

Round her waist his eager arms he bended,

Dashing from his eyes the blinding tear:

"Wert thou even from the grave ascended,

Come unto my heart, and warm thee here!"

Sweet the long embrace—

"Raise that pallid face;

None but thou and are watching, dear!"

XVIII.

Was it love that brought the maiden thither,

To the chamber of the stranger guest?

Love's bright fire should kindle, and not wither;

Love's sweet thrill should soothe, not torture, rest.

His impassion'd mood

Warms her torpid blood,

Yet there beats no heart within her breast.

XIX.

Meanwhile goes the mother, softly creeping,

Through the house, on needful cares intent,

Hears a murmur, and, while all are sleeping,

Wonders at the sounds, and what they meant.

Who was whispering so?—

Voices soft and low,

In mysterious converse strangely blent.

XX.

Straightway by the door herself she stations,

There to be assured what was amiss;

And she hears love's fiery protestations,

Words of ardour and endearing bliss:

"Hark, the cock! 'Tis light!

But to-morrow night

Thou wilt come again?"—and kiss on kiss.

XXI.

Quick the latch she raises, and, with features

Anger-flush'd, into the chamber hies.

"Are there in my house such shameless creatures,

Minions to the stranger's will?" she cries.

By the dying light,

Who is't meets her sight?

God! 'tis her own daughter she espies!

XXII.

And the youth in terror sought to cover,

With her own light veil, the maiden's head,

Clasp'd her close; but, gliding from her lover,

Back the vestment from her brow she spread,

And her form upright,

As with ghostly might,

Long and slowly rises from the bed.

XXIII.

"Mother! mother! wherefore thus deprive me

Of such joy as I this night have known?

Wherefore from these warm embraces drive me?

Was I waken'd up to meet thy frown?

Did it not suffice

That, in virgin guise,

To an early grave you brought me down?

XXIV.

"Fearful is the weird that forced me hither,

From the dark-heap'd chamber where I lay;

Powerless are your drowsy anthems, neither

Can your priests prevail, howe'er they pray.

Salt nor lymph can cool

Where the pulse is full;

Love must still burn on, though wrapp'd in clay.

XXV.

"To this youth my early troth was plighted,

Whilst yet Venus ruled within the land;

Mother! and that vow ye falsely slighted,

At your new and gloomy faith's command.

But no God will hear,

If a mother swear

Pure from love to keep her daughter's hand.

XXVI.

"Nightly from my narrow chamber driven,

Come I to fulfil my destined part,

Him to seek for whom my troth was given,

And to draw the life blood from his heart.

He hath served my will;

More I yet must kill,

For another prey I now depart.

XXVII.

"Fair young man! thy thread of life is broken,

Human skill can bring no aid to thee.

There thou hast my chain—a ghastly token—

And this lock of thine I take with me.

Soon must thou decay,

Soon wilt thou be gray,

Dark although to-night thy tresses be.

XXVIII.

"Mother! hear, oh hear my last entreaty!

Let the funeral pile arise once more;

Open up my wretched tomb for pity,

And in flames our souls to peace restore.

When the ashes glow,

When the fire-sparks flow,

To the ancient gods aloft we soar."

After this most powerful and original ballad, let us turn to something more genial. The three following poems are exquisite specimens of the varied genius of our author; and we hardly know whether to prefer the plaintive beauty of the first, or the light and sportive brilliancy of the other twain.

FIRST LOVE.

Oh, who will bring me back the day,

So beautiful, so bright!

Those days when love first bore my heart

Aloft on pinions light?

Oh, who will bring me but an hour

Of that delightful time,

And wake in me again the power

That fired my golden prime?

I nurse my wound in solitude,

I sigh the livelong day,

And mourn the joys, in wayward mood,

That now are pass'd away.

Oh, who will bring me back the days

Of that delightful time,

And wake in me again the blaze

That fired my golden prime?

WHO'LL BUY A CUPID?

Of all the wares so pretty

That come into the city,

There's none are so delicious,

There's none are half so precious,

As those which we are binging.

O, listen to our singing!

Young loves to sell! young loves to sell!

My pretty loves who'll buy?

First look you at the oldest,

The wantonest, the boldest!

So loosely goes he hopping,

From tree and thicket dropping,

Then flies aloft as sprightly—

We dare but praise him lightly!

The fickle rogue! Young loves to sell!

My pretty loves who'll buy?

Now see this little creature—

How modest seems his feature!

He nestles so demurely,

You'd think him safer surely;

And yet for all his shyness,

There's danger in his slyness!

The cunning rogue! Young loves to sell!

My pretty loves who'll buy?

Oh come and see this lovelet,

This little turtle-dovelet!

The maidens that are neatest,

The tenderest and sweetest,

Should buy it to amuse 'em,

And nurse it in their bosom.

The little pet! Young loves to sell!

My pretty loves who'll buy?

We need not bid you buy them,

They're here, if you will try them.

They like to change their cages;

But for their proving sages

No warrant will we utter—

They all have wings to flutter.

The pretty birds! Young loves to sell!

Such beauties! Come and buy!

SECOND LIFE.

After life's departing sigh,

To the spots I loved most dearly,

In the sunshine and the shadow,

By the fountain welling clearly,

Through the wood and o'er the meadow,

Flit I like a butterfly.

063

There a gentle pair I spy.

Round the maiden's tresses flying,

From her chaplet I discover

All that I had lost in dying,

Still with her and with her lover.

Who so happy then as I?

For she smiles with laughing eye;

And his lips to hers he presses,

Vows of passion interchanging,

Stifling her with sweet caresses,

O'er her budding beauties ranging;

And around the twain I fly.

And she sees me fluttering nigh;

And beneath his ardour trembling,

Starts she up—then off I hover.

"Look there, dearest!" Thus dissembling,

Speaks the maiden to her lover—

"Come and catch that butterfly!"

In the days of his boyhood, and of Monk Lewis, Sir Walter Scott translated the Erl King, and since then it has been a kind of assay-piece for aspiring German students to thump and hammer at will. We have heard it sung so often at the piano by soft-voiced maidens, and hirsute musicians, before whose roaring the bull of Phalaris might be dumb, that we have been accustomed to associate it with stiff white cravats, green tea, and a superabundance of lemonade. But to do full justice to its unearthly fascination, one ought to hear it chanted by night in a lonely glade of the Schwartzwald or Spessart forest, with the wind moaning as an accompaniment, and the ghostly shadows of the branches flitting in the moonlight across the path.

THE ERL KING.

Who rides so late through the grisly night?

'Tis a father and child, and he grasps him tight;

He wraps him close in his mantle's fold,

And shelters the boy from the biting cold.

"My son, why thus to my arm dost cling?"

"Father, dost thou not see the Erlie-king?

The king with his crown and long black train!"

"My son, 'tis a streak of the misty rain! "

"Come hither, thou darling! come, go with me!

Fair games know I that I'll play with thee;

Many bright flowers my kingdoms hold!

My mother has many a robe of gold!"

"O father, dear father and dost thou not hear

What the Erlie-king whispers so low in mine ear?"

"Calm thee, my boy, 'tis only the breeze

Rustling the dry leaves beneath the trees!"

"Wilt thou go, bonny boy! wilt thou go with me?

My daughters shall wait on thee daintilie;

My daughters around thee in dance shall sweep,

And rock thee, and kiss thee, and sing thee to sleep!"

064

"O father, dear father! and dost thou not mark

Erlie-king's daughters move by in the dark?"

"I see it, my child; but it is not they,

'Tis the old willow nodding its head so grey!"

"I love thee! thy beauty charms me quite;

And if thou refusest, I'll take thee by might!"

"O father, dear father! he's grasping me—

My heart is as cold as cold can be!"

The father rides swiftly—with terror he gasps—

The sobbing child in his arms he clasps;

He reaches the castle with spurring and dread;

But, alack! in his arms the child lay dead!

Who has not heard of Mignon?—sweet, delicate little Mignon?—the woman-child, in whose miniature, rather than portrait, it is easy to trace the original of fairy Fenella? We would that we could adequately translate the song, which in its native German is so exquisitely plaintive, that few can listen to it without tears. This poem, it is almost needless to say, is anterior in date to Byron's Bride of Abyos

MIGNON.

Know'st thou the land where the pale citron grows,

And the gold orange through dark foliage glows?

A soft wind flutters from the deep blue sky,

The myrtle blooms, and towers the laurel high.

Know'st thou it well?

O there with thee!

O that I might, my own beloved one, flee!

Know'st thou the house? On pillars rest its beams,

Bright is its hall, in light one chamber gleams,

And marble statues stand, and look on me—

What have they done, thou hapless child, to thee?

Know'st thou it well?

O there with thee!

O that I might, my loved protector, flee!

Know'st thou the track that o'er the mountain goes,

Where the mule threads its way through mist and snows,

Where dwelt in caves the dragon's ancient brood,

Topples the crag, and o'er it roars the flood.

Know'st thou it well?

O come with me!

There lies our road—oh father, let us flee!

In order duly to appreciate the next ballad, you must fancy yourself (if you cannot realize it) stretched on the grass, by the margin of a mighty river of the south, rushing from or through an Italian lake, whose opposite shore you cannot descry for the thick purple haze of heat that hangs over its glassy surface. If you lie there for an hour or so, gazing into the depths of the blue unfathomable sky, till the fanning of the warm wind and the murmur of the water combine to throw you into a trance, you will be able to enjoy 065

THE FISHER.

The water rush'd and bubbled by—

An angler near it lay,

And watch'd his quill, with tranquil eye,

Upon the current play.

And as he sits in wasteful dream,

He sees the flood unclose,

And from the middle of the stream

A river-maiden rose.

She sang to him with witching wile,

"My brood why wilt thou snare,

With human craft and human guile,

To die in scorching air?

Ah! didst thou know how happy we

Who dwell in waters clear,

Thou wouldst come down at once to me,

And rest for ever here.

"The sun and ladye-moon they lave

Their tresses in the main,

And breathing freshness from the wave,

Come doubly bright again.

The deep blue sky, so moist and clear,

Hath it for thee no lure?

Does thine own face not woo thee down

Unto our waters pure?"

The water rush'd and bubbled by—

It lapp'd his naked feet;

He thrill'd as though he felt the touch

Of maiden kisses sweet.

She spoke to him, she sang to him—

Resistless was her strain—

Half-drawn, he sank beneath the wave,

And ne'er was seen again.

Our next extract smacks of the Troubadours, and would have better suited good old King René of Provence than a Paladin of the days of Charlemagne. Goethe has neither the eye of Wouverman nor Borgognone, and sketches but an indifferent battle-piece. Homer was a stark moss-trooper, and so was Scott; but the Germans want the cry of "boot and saddle" consumedly. However, the following is excellent in its way.

THE MINSTREL.

"What sounds are those without, along

The drawbridge sweetly stealing?

Within our hall I'd have that song,

That minstrel measure, pealing."

Then forth the little foot-page hied;

When he came back, the king he cried,

"Bring in the aged minstrel!"

"Good-even to you, lordlings all;

Fair ladies all, good-even.

Lo, star on star within this hall

I see a radiant heaven.

066

In hall so bright with noble light,

'Tis not for thee to feast thy sight,

Old man, look not around thee!"

He closed his eyne, he struck his lyre

In tones with passion laden,

Till every gallant's eye shot fire,

And down look'd every maiden.

The king, enraptured with his strain,

Held out to him a golden chain,

In guerdon of his harping.

"The golden chain give not to me,

For noble's breast its glance is,

Who meets and beats thy enemy

Amid the shock of lances.

Or give it to thy chancellere—

Let him its golden burden bear,

Among his other burdens.

"I sing as sings the bird, whose note

The leafy bough is heard on.

The song that falters from my throat

For me is ample guerdon.

Yet I'd ask one thing, an I might,

A draught of brave wine, sparkling bright

Within a golden beaker!"

The cup was brought. He drain'd its lees,

"O draught that warms me cheerly!

Blest is the house where gifts like these

Are counted trifles merely.

Lo, when you prosper, think on me,

And thank your God as heartily

As for this draught I thank you!"

We intend to close the present Number with a very graceful, though simple ditty, which Goethe may possibly have altered from the Morlachian, but which is at all events worthy of his genius. Previously, however, in case any of the ladies should like something sentimental, we beg leave to present them with as nice a little chansonette as ever was transcribed into an album.

THE VIOLET.

A violet blossom'd on the lea,

Half hidden from the eye,

As fair a flower as you might see;

When there came tripping by

A shepherd maiden fair and young,

Lightly, lightly o'er the lea;

Care she knew not, and she sung

Merrily!

"O were I but the fairest flower

That blossoms on the lea;

If only for one little hour,

That she might gather me—

Clasp me in her bonny breast!"

Thought the little flower.

"O that in it I might rest

But an hour!"

067

Lack-a-day! Up came the lass,

Heeded not the violet;

Trod it down into the grass;

Though it died, 'twas happy yet.

"Trodden down although I lie,

Yet my death is very sweet—

For I cannot choose but die

At her feet!"

THE DOLEFUL LAY OF THE NOBLE WIFE OF ASAN AGA.

What is yon so white beside the greenwood?

Is it snow, or flight of cygnets resting?

Were it snow, ere now it had been melted;

Were it swans, ere now the flock had left us.

Neither snow nor swans are resting yonder,

'Tis the glittering tents of Asan Aga.

Faint he lies from wounds in stormy battle;

There his mother and his sisters seek him,

But his wife hangs back for shame, and comes not.

When the anguish of his hurts was over,

To his faithful wife he sent this message—

"Longer 'neath my roof thou shalt not tarry,

Neither in my court nor in my household."

When the lady heard this cruel sentence,

'Reft of sense she stood, and rack'd with anguish:

In the court she heard the horses stamping,

And in fear that it was Asan coming,

Fled towards the tower, to leap and perish.

Then in terror ran her little daughters,

Calling after her, and weeping sorely,

"These are not the steeds of Father Asan;

'Tis thy brother Pintorovich coming!"

And the wife of Asan turn'd to meet him;

Sobbing, threw her arms around her brother.

"See the wrongs, O brother, of thy sister!

These five babes I bore, and must I leave them?"

Silently the brother from his girdle

Draws the ready deed of separation,

Wrapp'd within a crimson silken cover.

She is free to seek her mother's dwelling—

Free to join in wedlock with another.

When the woful lady saw the writing,

Kiss'd she both her boys upon the forehead,

Kiss'd on both the cheeks her sobbing daughters;

But she cannot tear herself for pity

From the infant smiling in the cradle!

Rudely did her brother tear her from it,

Deftly lifted her upon a courser,

And in haste, towards his father's dwelling,

Spurr'd he onward with the woful lady.

Short the space; seven days, but barely seven—

Little space I ween—by many nobles

068

Was the lady—still in weeds of mourning—

Was the lady courted in espousal.

Far the noblest was Imoski's cadi;

And the dame in tears besought her brother—

"I adjure thee, by the life thou bearest,

Give me not a second time in marriage,

That my heart may not be rent asunder

If again I see my darling children!"

Little reck'd the brother of her bidding,

Fix'd to wed her to Imoski's cadi.

But the gentle lady still entreats him—

"Send at least a letter, O my brother!

To Imoski's cadi, thus imploring—

I, the youthful widow, greet thee fairly,

And entreat thee, by this selfsame token,

When thou comest hither with thy bridesmen,

Bring a heavy veil, that I may shroud me

As we pass along by Asan's dwelling,

So I may not see my darling orphans."

Scarcely had the cadi read the letter,

When he call'd together all his bridesmen,

Boune himself to bring the lady homewards,

And he brought the veil as she entreated.

Jocundly they reach'd the princely mansion,

Jocundly they bore her thence in triumph;

But when they drew near to Asan's dwelling,

Then the children recognized their mother,

And they cried, "Come back unto thy chamber—

Share the meal this evening with thy children;"

And she turn'd her to the lordly bridegroom—

"Pray thee, let the bridesmen and their horses

Halt a little by the once-loved dwelling,

Till I give these presents to my children."

And they halted by the once-loved dwelling,

And she gave the weeping children presents,

Gave each boy a cap with gold embroider'd,

Gave each girl a long and costly garment,

And with tears she left a tiny mantle

For the helpless baby in the cradle.

These things mark'd the father, Asan Aga,

And in sorrow call'd he to his children—

"Turn again to me, ye poor deserted;

Hard as steel is now your mother's bosom;

Shut so fast, it cannot throb with pity!"

Thus he spoke; and when the lady heard him,

Pale as death she dropp'd upon the pavement,

And the life fled from her wretched bosom

As she saw her children turning from her.

MY FIRST LOVE.

A SKETCH IN NEW YORK.

"Margaret, where are you?" cried a silver-toned voice from a passage outside the drawing-room in which I had just seated myself. The next instant a lovely face appeared at the door, its owner tripped into the room, made a comical curtsy, and ran up to her sister.

"It is really too bad, Margaret; pa' frets and bustles about, nearly runs over me upon the stairs, and then goes down the street as if 'Change were on fire. Ma' yawns, and will not hear of our going shopping, and grumbles about money—always money—that horrid money! Ah! dear Margaret, our shopping excursion is at an end for to-day!"

Sister Margaret, to whom this lamentation was addressed, was reclining on the sofa, her left hand supporting her head, her right holding the third volume of a novel. She looked up with a languishing and die-away expression—

"Poor Staunton will be in despair," said her sister. "This is at least his tenth turn up and down the Battery. Last night he was a perfect picture of misery. I could not have had the heart to refuse to dance with him. How could you be so cruel, Margaret?"

"Alas!" replied Margaret with a deep sigh, "how could I help it? Mamma was behind me, and kept pushing me with her elbow. Mamma is sometimes very ill-bred." And another sigh burst from the overcharged heart of the sentimental fair one.

"Well," rejoined her sister, "I don't know why she so terribly dislikes poor Staunton; but to say the truth, our gallopade lost nothing by his absence. He is as stiff as a Dutch doll when he dances. Even our Louisianian backwoodsman here, acquits himself much more creditably."

And the malicious girl gave me such an arch look, that I could not be angry with the equivocal sort of compliment paid to myself.

"That is very unkind, Arthurine," said Margaret, her checks glowing with anger at this attack upon the graces of her admirer.

"Don't be angry, sister," cried Arthurine, running up to her, throwing her arms round her neck, and kissing and soothing her till she began to smile. They formed a pretty group. Arthurine especially, as she skipped up to her sister, scarce touching the carpet with her tiny feet, looked like a fairy or a nymph. She was certainly a lovely creature, slender and flexible as a reed, with a waist one could easily have spanned with one's ten fingers; feet and hands on the very smallest scale, and of the most beautiful mould; features exquisitely regular; a complexion of lilies and roses; a small graceful head, adorned with a profusion of golden hair; and then large round clear blue eyes, full of mischief and fascination. She was, as the French say, à croquer.

"Heigho!" sighed the sentimental Margaret. "To think of this vulgar, selfish man intruding himself between me and such a noble creature as Staunton! It is really heart-breaking."

"Not quite so bad as that!" said Arthurine. "Moreland, as you know, has a good five hundred thousand dollars; and Staunton has nothing, or at most a couple of thousand dollars a-year—a mere feather in the balance against such a golden weight."

"Nonsense!" replied her sister; "I would not even despise silver, if it were in sufficient quantity. Only think of the balls and parties, the fêtes and pic-nics! Saratoga in the summer—perhaps even London or Paris! The mere thought of it makes my mouth water."

"Talk not of such joys, to be bought at such a price!" cried Margaret, quoting probably from some of her favourite novels.

"Well, don't make yourself unhappy now," said Arthurine. "Moreland will not be here till tea-time; and there are six long hours to that. If we had only a few new novels to 070pass the time! I cannot imagine why Cooper is so lazy. Only one book in a year! What if you were to begin to write, sister? I have no doubt you would succeed as well as Mrs Mitchell. Bulwer is so fantastical; and even Walter Scott is getting dull."

"Patience, dear Margaret," said I. "If possible, I will help you to get rid of the old fellow. At any rate, I will try."

Rat-tat-tat at the house door. Arthurine put up her finger to enjoin silence, and listened. Another loud knock. "A visit!" exclaimed she with sparkling eyes. "Ha! ladies; I hear the rustle of their gowns." And as she spoke the door opened, and the Misses Pearce came swimming into the room, in all the splendour of violet-coloured silks, covered with feathers, lace, and embroideries, and bringing with them an atmosphere of perfume.

The man who has the good fortune to see our New York belles in their morning or home attire, must have a heart made of quartz or granite if he resists their attractions. Their graceful forms, their intellectual and somewhat languishing expression of countenance, their bright and beaming eyes, their slender figures, which make one inclined to seize and hold them lest the wind should blow them away, their beautifully delicate hands and feet, compose a sum of attraction perfectly irresistible. The Boston ladies are perhaps better informed, and their features are usually more regular; but they have something Yankeeish about them, which I could never fancy, and, moreover, they are dreadful blue-stockings. The fair Philadelphians are rounder, more elastic, more Hebe-like, and unapproachable in the article of small-talk; but it is amongst the beauties of New York that romance writers should seek for their Julias and Alices. I am certain that if Cooper had made their acquaintance whilst writing his books, he would have torn up his manuscripts, and painted his heroines after a less wooden fashion. He can only have seen them on the Battery or in Broadway, where they are so buried and enveloped in finery that it is impossible to guess what they are really like. The two young ladies who had just entered the room, were shining examples of that system of over-dressing. They seemed to have put on at one time the three or four dresses worn in the course of the day by a London or Paris fashionable.

It was now all over with my tête-à-tête. I could only be de trop in the gossip of the four ladies, and I accordingly took my leave. As I passed before the parlour door on my way out, it was opened, and Mrs Bowsends beckoned me in. I entered, and found her husband also there.

"Our side lost—completely floored. But you've heard of it, I suppose, Mister Howard?"

I turned from one to the other in astonished perplexity, not knowing to which I ought to listen first.

"I don't know how it is," whined the lady, "but that Mr Staunton becomes every day more odious to me. Only think now, of his having the effrontery to persist in running after Margaret! Hardly two thousand a-year "—

"Old Hickory is preparing to leave Hermitage already.²¹ Bank shares have fallen half per cent in consequence," snarled her husband.

"He ought to remember the difference of our positions," said Mrs B., drawing herself up with much dignity.

"Certainly, certainly!" said I. 071"And the governor's election is also going desperate bad," said Mr Bowsends.

"And then Margaret, to think of her infatuation! Certainly she is a good, gentle creature; but five hundred thousand dollars!" This was Mrs Bowsends.

The five hundred thousand dollars touched a responsive chord in the heart of the papa.

"Five hundred thousand," repeated he. "Yes, certainly; but what's the use of that? All nonsense. Those girls would ruin a Croesus."

"You need not talk, I'm sure," retorted mamma. "Think of all your bets and electioneering."

"You understand nothing about that," replied her husband angrily. "Interests of the country—congress—public good—must be supported. Who would do it if we"—

"Apropos," interrupted her loving husband. "How has your cotton crop turned out? You might consign it to me. How many bales?"

"As to that," said I negligently, "I have sufficient capital in my hands to increase the one hundred bales to two hundred another year."

"Two hundred! two hundred!" The man's eyes glistened approvingly. "That might do. Not so bad. Well, Arthurine is a good girl. We'll see, my dear Mr Howard—we'll see. Yes, yes—come here every evening—whenever you like. You know Arthurine is always glad to see you."

I bowed, agreeably surprised, and took my departure. I was nevertheless not over well pleased with a part of Mr Bowsends' last speech. It looked rather too much as if my affectionate father-in-law that was to be, wished to balance his lost bets with my cotton bales; and, as I thought of it, my gorge rose at the selfishness of my species, and more especially at the stupid impudent egotism of Bowsends and the thousands who resemble him. To all such, even their children are nothing but so many bales of goods, to be bartered, bought, and sold. And this man belongs to the haut-ton of New York! Five-and-twenty years ago he went about with a tailor's measure in his pocket—now a leader on 'Change, and member of twenty committees and directorships.

But then Arthurine, with her seventeen summers and her lovely face, the most extravagant little doll in the whole city, and that is not saying a little, but the most elegant, charming—a perfect sylph! It was now about eleven months since I had first become acquainted with the bewitching creature; and, from the very first day, I had been her vassal, her slave, bound by chains as adamantine as those of Armida. She had just left the French boarding-school at St John's. That, by the by, is one of the means by which our mushroom aristocracy pushes itself upwards. A couple of pretty daughters, brought up at a fashionable school, are sure to attract a swarm of young fops and danglers about them; and the glory of the daughters is reflected upon the papa and mamma. And this little sorceress knew right well how to work her incantations. Every heart was at her feet; but not one out of her twenty or more adorers could boast that he had received a smile or a look more than his fellows. I was the only one who had perhaps obtained a sort of passive preference. I was allowed to escort her in her rides, walks, and drives; to be her regular partner when no other dancer offered, and suchlike enviable privileges. She flirted and fluttered about me, and hung familiarly on my arm, as she tripped along Broadway or the Battery by my side. In addition to all these little marks of preference, it fell to my share of duty to supply her with the newest novels, to furnish her with English Keepsakes and American Tokens and Souvenirs, and to provide the last fashionable songs and quadrilles. All this had cost me no small sum; but I consoled myself with 072the reflection, that my presents were made to the prettiest girl in New York, and that sooner or later she must reward my assiduities. Twice had fortune smiled upon me; in one instance, when we were standing on the bridge at Niagara, looking down on the foaming waters, and I was obliged to put my arm round her waist, for fear she should become dizzy and fall in—in doing which, by the by, I very nearly fell in myself. A similar thing occurred on a visit we made to the Trenton falls. That was all I had got for my pains, however, during the eleven months that I had trifled away in New York—months that had served to lighten my purse pretty considerably. It is the fashion in our southern states to choose our wives from amongst the beauties of the north. I had been bitten by the mania, and had come to New York upon this important business; but having been there nearly a year, it was high time to make an end of matters, if I did not wish to be put on the shelf as stale goods.

This last reflection occurred to me very strongly as I was walking from the Bowsends' house towards Wall Street, when suddenly I caught sight of my fellow-sufferer Staunton. The Yankee's dolorous countenance almost made me smile. Up he came, with the double object of informing me that the weather was very fine, and of offering me a bite at his pigtail tobacco. I could not help expressing my astonishment that so sensitive and delicate a creature as Margaret should tolerate such a habit in the man of her choice.

"Yes, but he has got five hundred thousand dollars, and that sweetens the poison."

"Two hundred thousand, they say; but to-morrow he may not have a farthing. You know our New Yorkers. Nothing but bets, elections, shares, railways, banks. His expenses are enormous; and, if he once got his daughters off his hands, he would perhaps fail next week."

"Of course it would be so. Mean time you can marry the languishing Margaret, and do like many others of your fellow citizens; go out with a basket on your arm to the Greenwich market, and whilst your delicate wife is enjoying her morning slumber, buy the potatoes and salted mackerel for breakfast. In return for that, she will perhaps condescend to pour you out a cup of bohea. Famous thing that bohea! capital antidote to the dyspepsia!"

"And you foolish," I retorted. "To a young barrister like you, there are hundreds of houses open."

We had been chatting in this manner for nearly a quarter of an hour, when a coach drove out of Greenwich Street, in which I saw a face that I thought I knew. One of the Philadelphia steamers had just arrived. I stepped forward.

It was Richards, my school and college friend, and my neighbour, after the fashion of the southern states; for he lived only about a hundred and seventy miles from me. I said good-by to poor simple Staunton, got into the coach, and we rattled off through Broadway to the American hotel.

"For heaven's sake, George!" exclaimed my friend, as soon as we were installed in a room, "tell me what you are doing here. Have you quite forgotten house, land, and 073friends? You have been eleven months away."

"True," replied I; "making love—and not a step further advanced than the first."

"The report is true, then, that you have been harpooned by the Bowsends? Poor fellow! I am sorry for you. Just tell me what you mean to do with the dressed-up doll when you get her? A young lady who has not enough patience even to read her novels from beginning to end, and who, before she was twelve years old, had Tom Moore and Byron, Don Juan perhaps excepted, by heart. A damsel who has geography and the globes, astronomy and Cuvier, Raphael's cartoons and Rossini's operas, at her finger-ends; but who, as true as I am alive, does not know whether a mutton chop is cut off a pig or a cow—who would boil tea and cauliflowers in the same manner, and has some vague idea that eggs are the principal ingredient in a gooseberry pie."

"Who does not know," continued Richards, "whether dirty linen ought to be boiled or baked."

"Yes, all that will do you a deal of good. I know the family; both father and mother are the most contemptible people breathing."

"Stop there!" cried I; "they are not one iota better or worse than their neighbours."

"Well, then, leave them in peace. I have promised to drink tea there at six o'clock. If you will come, I will take you with me."

"Know then already, man. I will go, on one condition; that you leave New York with me in three days."

Six o'clock struck as we entered the drawing-room of my future mother-in-law. The good lady almost frightened me as I went in, by her very extraordinary appearance in a tremendous grey gauze turban, fire-new, just arrived by the Henri Quatre packet-ship from Havre, and that gave her exactly the look of one of our Mississippi night-owls. Richards seemed a little startled; and Moreland, who was already there, could not take his eyes off this remarkable head-dress. Miss Margaret was costumed in pale green silk, her hair flattened upon each side of her forehead a la Marguerite, (see the Journal des Modes,) and looking like Jephtha's daughter, pale and resigned, but rather more lackadaisical, with a sort of "though-absent-not-forgot" look about her, inexpressibly sentimental and interesting. The contrast was certainly rather strong between old Moreland, who sat there, red-faced, thickset, and clumsy, and the airy slender Staunton, who, for fear of spoiling his figure, lived upon oysters and macaroon, and drank water with a rose leaf in it.

I had brought the languishing beauty above described, Scott's Tales of my Grandfather, which had just appeared.

"Ah! Walter Scott!" exclaimed she, in her pretty melting tones. Then, after a moment's pause, "The vulgar man has not a word to say for himself;" said she to me, in a low tone.

"Wait a little," replied I; "he'll improve. It is no doubt his modest timidity that keeps his lips closed."

Meanwhile Richards had got into conversation with Bowsends. The unlucky dog, who did not know that his host was a violent Adams-ite, and had lost a good five thousand dollars in bets and subscriptions to influence the voices of the sovereign people at the recent election, had fallen on the sore subject. He began by informing his host that Old Hickory would shortly leave the Hermitage to assume his duties as president.

"The blood-thirsty backwoodsman, half horse, half alligator" interrupted Mr Bowsends.

"Not so very vulgar for that," said blundering Moreland; "tobacco has quite another taste out of a pipe."

I gave him a tremendous dig in the back with my elbow. 074 "Do you smoke out of a tobacco pipe, Mr Moreland?" enquired Margaret in her flute-like tones.

Moreland stared; he had a vague idea that he had got himself into a scrape, but his straightforward honesty prevented him from prevaricating, and he blurted out—"Sometimes, miss."

I thought the sensitive creature would have swooned away at this admission; and I had just laid my arm over the back of her chair to support her, when Arthurine entered the room. She gave a quick glance to me; it was too late to draw back my arm. She did not seem to notice any thing, saluted the company gaily and easily, tripped up to Moreland, wished him good evening—asked after his bets, his ships, his old dog Tom—chattered, in short, full ten minutes in a breath. Before Moreland knew what she was about, she had taken one of his hands in both of hers. But they were old acquaintances, and he might easily have been her grandfather. Meanwhile Margaret had somewhat recovered from the shock.

"He smokes out of a pipe!" lisped she to Arthurine, in a tone of melancholy resignation.

"Old Hickory is very popular in Pennsylvania," said Richards, resuming the conversation that had been interrupted, and perfectly unconscious, as Moreland would have said, of the shoals he was sailing amongst. "A Bedford County farmer has just sent him a present of a cask of Monongahela."

"I envy him that present," cried Moreland. "A glass of genuine Monongahela is worth any money."

This second shock was far too violent to be resisted by Margaret's delicate nerves. She sank back in her chair, half fainting, half hysterical. Her maids were called in, and with their help she managed to leave the room.

"Oh! then she will soon be well again," rejoined the affectionate sister, apparently by no means alarmed.

Now that this nervous beauty was gone, the conversation became much more lively. Captain Moreland was a jovial sailor, who had made ten voyages to China, fifteen to Constantinople, twenty to St Petersburg, and innumerable ones to Liverpool and through his exertions had amassed the large fortune which he was now enjoying. He was a merry-hearted man, with excellent sound sense on all points except one—that one being the fair sex, with which he was about as well acquainted as an alligator with a camera-obscure. The attentions paid to him by Arthurine seemed to please the old bachelor uncommonly. There was a mixture of kindness, malice, and fascination in her manner, which was really enchanting; even the matter-of-fact Richards could not take his eyes off her.

"Did not I tell you so?" said I. "Only observe with what sweetness she gives in to the old man's humours and fancies!"

The hours passed like minutes. Supper was long over, and we rose to depart; when I shook hands with Arthurine, she pressed mine gently. I was in the ninety-ninth heaven.

"Now, boys," cried worthy Moreland, as soon as we were in the streets, "it would really be a pity to part so early on so joyous an evening. What do you say? Will you come to my house, and knock the necks off half a dozen bottles?"

We agreed to this proposal; and, taking the old seaman between us, steered in the direction of his cabin, as he called his magnificent and well-furnished house.

"What a delightful family those Bowsends are!" exclaimed Moreland, as soon as we were comfortably seated beside a blazing fire, with the Lafitte and East India Madeira sparkling on the table beside us. "And what charming girls! 'You're getting oldish,' says I to myself the other day, 'but you're still fresh and active, sound as a dolphin. Better get married.' Margaret pleased me uncommonly, so I"—

"Pshaw! Five times a hundred thousand dollars! I tell you what, my lad, that's not to be met with every day."

"Fifty years old," replied I. 075 "Certainly, fifty years old, but stout and healthy; none of your spindle-shanked dandies—your Stauntons"—

"I give that up. For Miss Margaret's sake, I'll burn my nose and mouth with those damned stumps of cigars."

"The devil fly away with him!" growled Moreland; "I wouldn't give up my whisky for all the girls in the world."

"Ah! It's because I talked of the Monongahela that she began with her hystericals, and went away for all the evening! That's where the wind sits, is it? Well, you may depend I ain't to be done out of my grog at any rate."

And he backed his assertion with an oath, swallowing off the contents of his glass by way of a clincher. We sat joking and chatting till past midnight during which time I flattered myself that I gave evidence of considerable diplomatic talents. As we were returning home, however, Richards doubted whether I had not driven the old boy rather too hard

"No matter," replied I, "if I have only succeeded in ridding poor Margaret of him."

"I don't know what may come of it," said he; "but I do not think you are likely to find much gratitude for your interference."

The next day was taken up in arranging matters of business consequent on the arrival of Richards. At least ten times I tried to go and see Arthurine, but was always prevented by something or other; and it was past tea-time when I at last got to the Bowsends' house. I found Margaret in the drawing-room, deep in a new novel.

"At the theatre!" repeated I in astonishment. They were playing Tom and Jerry, a favourite piece with the enlightened Kentuckians. I had seen the first scene or two at the New Orleans theatre, and had had quite enough of it.

"The noble girl!" exclaimed Margaret. "Mr Moreland came to tea, and urged us so much to go"—

"That she could not help going, to be bored and disgusted for a couple of hours."

"She went for my sake," said Margaret sentimentally. "Mamma would have one of us go."

"Yes, that is it," thought I. Jealousy would have been ridiculous. He fifty years old, she seventeen. I left the house, and went to find Richards.

"You put a wasp's nest into the old fellow's brain-pan yesterday," said he. "Take care you do not get stung yourself."

"Well, I will go with you. The sooner you are cured the better. But only for ten minutes."

There was certainly no temptation to remain longer in that atmosphere of whisky and tobacco fumes. It was at the Bowery theatre. The light swam as though seen through a thick fog; and a perfect shower of orange and apple peel, and even less agreeable things, rained down from the galleries. Tom and Jerry were in all their glory. I looked round the boxes, and soon saw the charming Arthurine, apparently perfectly comfortable, chatting with old Moreland as gravely, and looking as demure and self-possessed, as if she had been a married woman of thirty.

"That is a prudent young lady," said Richards; "she has an eye to the dollars, and would marry Old Hickory himself, spite of whisky and tobacco pipe, if he had more money, and were to ask her."

"If you weren't such an infatuated fool," continued my plain-spoken friend, I would say to you, let her take her own way, and the day after to-morrow we will leave New York."

"One week more," said I, with an uneasy feeling about the heart. 076 At seven the next evening I entered what had been my Elysium, but was now, little by little, becoming my Tartarus. Again I found Margaret alone over a romance. "And Arthurine?" enquired I, in a voice that might perhaps have been steadier.

"To hear Miss Fanny Wright! the atheist, the revolutionist! What a mad fancy! Who would ever have dreamed of such a thing!"

This Miss Fanny Wright was a famous lecturess, of the Owenite school, who was shunned like a pestilence by the fashionable world of New York.

"Mr Moreland," answered Margaret, "said so much about her eloquence that Arthurine's curiosity was roused."

"Oh! you do not know what a noble girl she is. For her sister she would sacrifice her life. My only hope is in her."

The next morning I got up, restless and uneasy; and eleven o'clock had scarcely struck when I reached the Bowsends' house. This time both sisters were at home; and as I entered the drawing-room, Arthurine advanced to meet me with a beautiful smile upon her face. There was nevertheless a something in the expression of her countenance that made me start. I pressed her hand. She looked tenderly at me.

"I hope you have been amusing yourself these last two days," said I after a moment's pause.

"Novelty has a certain charm," replied Arthurine. "Yet I certainly never expected to become a disciple of Miss Fanny Wright," added she, laughing.

"Really! I should have thought the transition from Tom and Jerry rather an easy one."

"A little more respect for Tom and Jerry, whom we patronize—that is to say, Mr Moreland and our high mightiness," replied Arthurine, trying, as I fancied, to conceal a certain confusion of manner under a laugh.

"I should scarcely have thought my Arthurine would have become a party to such a conspiracy against good taste," replied I gravely.

"My Arthurine!" repeated she, laying a strong accent on the pronoun possessive. "Only see what rights and privileges the gentleman is usurping! We live in a free country, I believe?"

There was a mixture of jest and earnest in her charming countenance. I looked enquiringly at her.

"Do you know," cried she, "I have taken quite a fancy to Moreland? He is so good-natured, such a sterling character, and his roughness wears off when one knows him well."

"Which are by no means the least of his recommendations. Only think of the balls, Howard! I hope you will come to them. And then Saratoga; next year London and Paris. Oh! it will be delightful."

"And poor Margaret is saved!" added she, throwing her arms round her sister's neck, and kissing and caressing her. I hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry.

"Then, I suppose, I may congratulate you?" said I, forcing a laugh, and looking, I have no doubt, very like a fool.

You may so," replied Arthurine. "This morning Mr Moreland begged permission to transfer his addresses from Margaret to your very humble servant."

"We naturally, in consideration of the petitioner's many amiable qualities, have promised to take the request into our serious consideration. For decorum's sake, you know, one must deliberate a couple of days or so."

"'Fare-thee-well! and if for ever

Still for ever fare-thee-well!'"

said Arthurine, in a half-laughing, half-sighing tone. The next instant I had left the room.

On the stairs I met the beturbaned Mrs Bowsends, who led the way mysteriously into the parlour.

"You have seen Arthurine?" said 077she. "What a dear, darling child!—is she not? Oh! that girl is our joy and consolation. And Mr Moreland—the charming Mr Moreland! Now that things are arranged so delightfully, we can let Margaret have her own way a little."

"Yes; as an old friend I do not mind telling you—though it must still remain a secret for a short time. Mr Moreland has made a formal proposal to Arthurine."

I do not know what reply I made, before flinging myself out of the room and house, and running down the street as if I had just escaped from a lunatic asylum.

"Thank God!" exclaimed Richards. "So you are cured of the New York fever? Start! Yes, by all means, before you get a relapse. You must come with me to Virginia for a couple of months."

As we were going down to the steam-boat on the following morning, Staunton overtook us, breathless with speed and delight.

"And I jilted!" replied I with a laugh. "But I am not such a fool as to make myself unhappy about a woman."

Light words enough, but my heart was heavy as I spoke them. Five minutes later, we were on our way to Virginia.

HYDRO-BACCHUS.

Great Homer sings how once of old

The Thracian women met to hold

To "Bacchus, ever young and fair,"

Mysterious rites with solemn care.

For now the summer's glowing face

Had look'd upon the hills of Thrace;

And laden vines foretold the pride

Of foaming vats at Autumn tide.

There, while the gladsome Evöe shout

Through Nysa's knolls rang wildly out,

While cymbal clang, and blare of horn,

O'er the broad Hellespont were borne;

The sounds, careering far and near,

Struck sudden on Lycurgus' ear—

Edonia's grim black-bearded lord,

Who still the Bacchic rites abhorr'd,

And cursed the god whose power divine

Lent heaven's own fire to generous wine.

Ere yet th' inspired devotees

Had half performed their mysteries,

Furious he rush'd amidst the band,

And whirled an ox-goad in his hand.

Full many a dame on earth lay low

Beneath the tyrant's savage blow;

The rest, far scattering in affright,

Sought refuge from his rage in flight.

But the fell king enjoy'd not long

The triumph of his impious wrong:

The vengeance of the god soon found him,

And in a rocky dungeon bound him.

There, sightless, chain'd, in woful tones

He pour'd his unavailing groans,

Mingled with all the blasts that shriek

Round Athos' thunder-riven peak.

078

O Thracian king! how vain the ire

That urged thee 'gainst the Bacchic choir

The god avenged his votaries well—

Stern was the doom that thee befell;

And on the Bacchus-hating herd

Still rests the curse thy guilt incurr'd.

For the same spells that in those days

Were wont the Bacchanals to craze—

The maniac orgies, the rash vow,

Have fall'n on thy disciples now.

Though deepest silence dwells alone,

Parnassus, on thy double cone;

To mystic cry, through fell and brake,

No more Cithaeron's echoes wake;

No longer glisten, white and fleet,

O'er the dark lawns of Taÿgete,

The Spartan virgin's bounding feet:

Yet Frenzy still has power to roll

Her portents o'er the prostrate soul.

Though water-nymphs must twine the spell

Which once the wine-god threw so well—

Changed are the orgies now, 'tis true,

Save in the madness of the crew.

Bacchus his votaries led of yore

Through woodland glades and mountains hoar;

While flung the Maenad to the air

The golden masses of her hair,

And floated free the skin of fawn,

From her bare shoulder backward borne.

Wild Nature, spreading all her charms,

Welcomed her children to her arms;

Laugh'd the huge oaks, and shook with glee,

In answer to their revelry;

Kind Night would cast her softest dew

Where'er their roving footsteps flew;

So bright the joyous fountains gush'd,

So proud the swelling rivers rush'd,

That mother Earth they well might deem,

With honey, wine, and milk, for them

Most bounteously had fed the stream.

The pale moon, wheeling overhead,

Her looks of love upon them shed,

And pouring forth her floods of light,

With all the landscape blest their sight.

Through foliage thick the moonshine fell,

Checker'd upon the grassy dell;

Beyond, it show'd the distant spires

Of skyish hills, the world's grey sires;

More brightly beam'd, where far away,

Around his clustering islands, lay,

Adown some opening vale descried,

The vast Aegean's waveless tide.

What wonder then, if Reason's power

Fail'd in each reeling mind that hour,

When their enraptured spirits woke

To Nature's liberty, and broke

The artificial chain that bound them,

With the broad sky above, and the free winds around them!

From Nature's overflowing soul,

That sweet delirium on them stole;

She held the cup, and bade them share

In draughts of joy too deep to bear.

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Not such the scenes that to the eyes

Of water-Bacchanals arise;

Whene'er the day of festival

Summons the Pledged t' attend its call—

In long procession to appear,

And show the world how good they are.

Not theirs the wild-wood wanderings,

The voices of the winds and springs:

But seek them where the smoke-fog brown

Incumbent broods o'er London town;

'Mid Finsbury Square ruralities

Of mangy grass, and scrofulous trees;

'Mid all the sounds that consecrate

Thy street, melodious Bishopsgate!

Not by the mountain grot and pine,

Haunts of the Heliconian Nine:

But where the town-bred Muses squall

Love-verses in an annual;

Such muses as inspire the grunt

Of Barry Cornwall, and Leigh Hunt.

Their hands no ivy'd thyrsus bear,

No Evöe floats upon the air:

But flags of painted calico

Flutter aloft with gaudy show;

And round then rises, long and loud,

The laughter of the gibing crowd.

O sacred Temp'rance! mine were shame

If I could wish to brand thy name.

But though these dullards boast thy grace,

Thou in their orgies hast no place.

Thou still disdain'st such sorry lot,

As even below the soaking sot.

Great was high Duty's power of old

The empire o'er man's heart to hold;

To urge the soul, or check its course,

Obedient to her guiding force.

These own not her control, but draw

New sanction for the moral law,

And by a stringent compact bind

The independence of the mind—

As morals had gregarious grown,

And Virtue could not stand alone.

What need they rules against abusing?

They find th' offence all in the using.

Denounce the gifts which bounteous Heaven

To cheer the heart of man has given;

And think their foolish pledge a band

More potent far than God's command.

On this new plan they cleverly

Work morals by machinery;

Keeping men virtuous by a tether,

Like gangs of negroes chain'd together.

Then, Temperance, if thus it be,

They know no further need of thee.

This pledge usurps thy ancient throne—

Alas! thy occupation's gone!

From earth thou may'st unheeded rise,

And like Astræa—seek the skies.

MARTIN LUTHER.

AN ODE.

Who sits upon the Pontiff's throne?

On Peter's holy chair

Who sways the keys? At such a time

When dullest ears may hear the chime

Of coming thunders—when dark skies

Are writ with crimson prophecies,

A wise man should be there;

A godly man, whose life might be

The living logic of the sea;

One quick to know, and keen to feel—

A fervid man, and full of zeal,

Should sit in Peter's chair.

Alas! no fervid man is there,

No earnest, honest heart;

One who, though dress'd in priestly guise,

Looks on the world with worldling's eyes;

One who can trim the courtier's smile,

Or weave the diplomatic wile,

But knows no deeper art;

One who can dally with fair forms,

Whom a well-pointed period warms—

No man is he to hold the helm

Where rude winds blow, and wild waves whelm,

And creaking timbers start.

In vain did Julius pile sublime

The vast and various dome,

That makes the kingly pyramid's pride,

And the huge Flavian wonder, hide

Their heads in shame—these gilded stones

(O heaven!) were very blood and bones

Of those whom Christ did come

To save—vile grin of slaves who sold

Celestial rights for earthy gold,

Marketing grace with merchant's measure,

To prank with Europe's pillaged treasure

The pride of purple Rome.

The measure of her sins is full,

The scarlet-vested whore!

Thy murderous and lecherous race

Have sat too long i' the holy place;

The knife shall lop what no drug cures,

Nor Heaven permits, nor earth endures,

The monstrous mockery more.

Behold! I swear it, saith the Lord:

Mine elect warrior girds the sword—

A nameless man, a miner's son,

Shall tame thy pride, thou haughty one,

And pale the painted whore!

Earth's mighty men are nought. I chose

Poor fishermen before

To preach my gospel to the poor;

A pauper boy from door to door

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That piped his hymn. By his strong word

The startled world shall now be stirr'd,

As with a lion's roar!

A lonely monk that loved to dwell

With peaceful host in silent cell;

This man shall shake the Pontiff's throne:

Him Kings and emperors shall own,

And stout hearts wince before

The eye profound and front sublime

Where speculation reigns.

He to the learned seats shall climb,

On Science' watch-tower stand sublime;

The arid doctrine shall inspire

Of wiry teachers with swift fire;

And, piled with cumbrous pains,

Proud palaces of sounding lies

Lay prostrate with a breath. The wise

Shall listen to his word; the youth

Shall eager seize the new-born truth

Where prudent age refrains.

Lo! when the venal pomp proceeds

From echoing town to town!

The clam'rous preacher and his train,

Organ and bell with sound inane,

The crimson cross, the book, the keys,

The flag that spreads before the breeze,

The triple-belted crown!

It wends its way; and straw is sold—

Yea! deadly drugs for heavy gold,

To feeble hearts whose pulse is fear;

And though some smile, and many sneer,

There's none will dare to frown.

None dares but one—the race is rare—

One free and honest man:

Truth is a dangerous thing to say

Amid the lies that haunt the day;

But He hath lent it voice; and, lo!

From heart to heart the fire shall go,

Instinctive without plan;

Proud bishops with a lordly train,

Fierce cardinals with high disdain,

Sleek chamberlains with smooth discourse,

And wrangling doctors all shall force,

In vain, one honest man.

In vain the foolish Pope shall fret,

It is a sober thing.

Thou sounding trifler, cease to rave,

Loudly to damn, and loudly save,

And sweep with mimic thunders' swell

Armies of honest souls to hell!

The time on whirring wing

Hath fled when this prevail'd. O, Heaven!

One hour, one little hour, is given,

If thou could'st but repent. But no!

To ruin thou shalt headlong go,

A doom'd and blasted thing.

082

Thy parchment ban comes forth; and lo!

Men heed it not, thou fool!

Nay, from the learned city's gate,

In solemn show, in pomp of state,

The watchmen of the truth come forth,

The burghers old of sterling worth,

And students of the school:

And he who should have felt thy ban

Walks like a prophet in the van;

He hath a calm indignant look,

Beneath his arm he bears a book,

And in his hand the Bull.

He halts; and in the middle space

Bids pile a blazing fire.

The flame ascends with crackling glee;

Then, with firm step advancing, He

Gives to the wild fire's wasting rule

The false Decretals, and the Bull,

While thus he vents his ire:—

"Because the Holy One o' the Lord

Thou vexed hast with impious word,

Therefore the Lord shall thee consume,

And thou shalt share the Devil's doom

In everlasting fire!"

He said; and rose the echo round

"In everlasting fire!"

The hearts of men were free; one word

Their inner depths of soul had stirr'd;

Erect before their God they stood

A truth-shod Christian brotherhood,

And wing'd with high desire.

And ever with the circling flame

Uprose anew the blithe acclaim:—

"The righteous Lord shall thee consume,

And thou shalt share the Devil's doom

In everlasting fire!"

Thus the brave German men; and we

Shall echo back the cry;

The burning of that parchment scroll

Annull'd the bond that sold the soul

Of man to man; each brother now

Only to one great Lord will bow,

One Father-God on high.

And though with fits of lingering life

The wounded foe prolong the strife,

On Luther's deed we build our hope,

Our steady faith—the fond old Pope

Is dying, and shall die.

TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA.

No. II

THE FAIRY TUTOR.

You have seen—and 'tis no longer ago than YESTERDAY!—you must well remember the picture—which showed you from the rough yet delicate—the humorous yet sympathetic and picturesque—the original yet insinuating pencil of a shrewd and hearty Lusatian mountaineer—the aerial, brilliant, sensitive, subtle, fascinating, enigmatical, outwardly—mirth-given, inwardly—sorrow-touched, congregated folk numberless—of the Fairies Proper!—showed them at the urgency of a rare and strange need—clung, in DEPENDENCY, to one fair, kind, good and happily-born Daughter of Man!—And what wonder?—The once glorious, but now forlorn spirits, leaning for one fate-burthened instant their trust upon the spirits ineffably favoured!—What wonder! that often as the revolution of ages brings on the appointed hour, the rebellious and outcast children of heaven must sue—to their keen emergency—help—oh! speak up to the height of the want, of the succour! and call it a lent ray of grace, from the rebellious and REDEEMED children of the earth!—And see, where, in the serene eyes of the soft Christian maiden, the hallowing influence shines!—Auspiciously begun, the awed though aspiring Rite, the still, the multitudinous, the mystical, prospers!—Gratefully, as for the boon inexpressibly worth—easily, as of their own transcending power—promptly, as though fearing that a benefit received could wax cold, the joyful Elves crown upon the bright hair of their graciously natured, but humanly and womanly weak benefactress—the wedded felicity of pure love!

And the imaginary curtain has dropped! Lo, where it rises again, discovering to view our stage, greatly changed, and, a little perhaps, our actors!—Once more, attaching to the HUMAN DRAMA, slight, as though it were structured of cloud, of air, the same light and radiant MACHINERY! Once more, only that They, whom you lately saw tranquil, earnest even to pathos—"now are frolic"—enough and to spare!—Once more—THE FAIRIES.

And see, too—where, centring in herself interest and action of the rapidly shifting scenery—ever again a beautiful granddaughter of Eve steps—free and fearless, and bouyant and bounding—our fancy-laid boards!—Ah! but how much unresembling the sweet maid!—Outwardly, for lofty-piled is the roof that ceils over the superb head of the modern Amazon, Swanhilda—more unlike within. Instead of the clear truth, the soul's gentle purity, the "plain and holy Innocence" of the poor fairy-beloved mountain child—SHE, in whose person and fortunes you are invited—for the next fifty minutes—to forget your own—harbours, fondly harbours, ill housemates of her virginal breast! a small, resolute, well-armed and well confederated garrison of unwomanly faults. Pride is there!—The iron-hard and the iron-cold! There Scorn—edging repulse with insult!—and envenoming insult with despair!—leaps up, in eager answer to the beseeching sighs, tears, and groans of earth-bent Adoration. And there is the indulged Insolency of a domineering—and as you will precipitately augur—an indomitable Will! And there is exuberant SELF-POWER, that, from the innermost mind, oozing up, out, distilling, circulating along nerve and vein, effects a magical metamorphosis! turns the nymph into a squire of arms; usurping even the clamorous and blood-sprinkled joy of man—the tempestuous and terrible CHASE, which, in the bosom of peace, imaging war, shows in the rougher lord of creation himself, as harsh, wild, and turbulent! Oh, how much other than yon sweet lily of the high Lusatian valleys, the shade-loving Flower, the good Maud—herself looked upon with 084love by the glad eyes of men, women, children, Fairies, and Angels! oh, other indeed! And yet, have you, in this thickly clustered enumeration of unamiable qualities, implicitly heard the CALL which must fasten, which has fastened, upon the gentle Maud's haughty antithesis—the serviceable regard, and—the FAVOUR, even of THE FAIRIES.

Hear, impatient spectator, the simple plot and its brief process. You are, after a fashion, informed with what studious, persevering, and unmerciful violation of all gentle decorum and feminine pity, the lovely marble-souled tyranness has, in the course of the last three or four years, turned back from her beetle-browed castle-gate, one by one, as they showed themselves there—a hundred, all worthily born—otherwise more and less meritorious—petitioners for that whip-and-javelin-bearing hand. You are NOW to know, that upon this very morning, an embassy from the willow-wearers all—or, to speak indeed more germanely to the matter, of the BASKET-BEARERS²², waited upon their beautiful enemy with an ultimatum and manifesto in one, importing first a requisition to surrender; then, in case of refusal to capitulate, the announcement that HYMEN having found in CUPID an inefficient ally, he was about associating with himself, in league offensive, the god MARS, with intent of carrying the Maiden-fortress by storm, and reducing the aforesaid wild occupants of the stronghold into captivity—whereunto she made answer—

——our castle's strength

Will laugh a siege to scorn—

herself laughing outrageously to scorn the senders and the sent This crowning of wrong upon wrong will the Fairies, in the first place, wreak and right.

But further, later upon the same unlucky day, the Kingdom of Elves, being in full council assembled in the broad light of the sun, upon the fair greensward; ere the very numerous, but not widely sitting diet had yet well opened its proceedings—"tramp, tramp, across the land," came, flying at full speed, boar-spear in hand, our madcap huntress; and without other note of preparation sounded than their own thunder, her iron-grey's hoofs were in the thick of the sage assembly, causing an indecorous trepidation, combined with devastation dire to persons and—wearing apparel.

And all transgression and injury, under one procedure, which is—summary; as, from the character of the judges and executioners, into whose hands the sinner has fallen, you would expect; sufficiently prankish too. With one sleight of their magical hand they turn the impoverished heiress of ill-possessed acres forth upon the highway, doomed to earn, with strenuous manual industry, her livelihood; until, from the winnings of her handicraft, she is moreover able to make good, as far as this was liable to pecuniary assessment, the damage sustained under foot of her fiery barb by the Fairy realm; comfort with handsome presents the rejected suitors; and until, thoroughly tame, she yields into her softened and opened bosom, now rid of its intemperate inmates, an entrance to the once debarred and contemned visitant—LOVE.

As to the way and style of the Fairy operations that carry out this drift, comparing the Two Tales, you will see, that omitting, as a matter that is related merely, not presented, that misadventure under the oak-tree—there is, in the chamber of Swanhilda, but a Fairy delegation active, whilst under the Sun's hill whole Elfdom is in presence; in that resplendent hollow, wearing their own lovely shapes; within the German castle-walls, in apt masquerade. There they were grave. Here, we have already said, that they are merry. There their office was to feel and to think. Here, if there be any trust in apparitions, they drink, and what is more critical for an Elfin lip—they eat!

Lastly, to end the comparisons for our well-bred, well-dressed, and right courtly cavalier, who transacted between 085the Fairy Queen and the stonemason's daughter, him you shall presently see turned into a sort of Elfin cupbearer or court butler; not without fairy grace of person and of mind assuredly; not without a due innate sense of the beautiful, as his perfumed name (SWEETFLOWER) at the outset warns you; and, as the proximity of his function to her Majesty's person—for we do not here fall in with any thing like mention of a king—would suggest, independently of the delicately responsible part borne by him in the action, the chief stress of which you will find incumbent upon his capable shoulders.

Such, in respect of the subject, is, thrice courteous and intelligent reader, the second piece of art, which we are glad to have the opportunity of placing before you, from our clever friend Ernst Willkomm's apparently right fertile easel. The second, answering to the first, LIKE and UNLIKE, you perceive, as two companion pictures should be.

But it would be worse than useless to tell you that which you have seen and that which you will see, unless, from the juxtaposition of the two fables, there followed—a moral. They have, as we apprehend, a moral—i.e. one moral, and that a grave one, in common between them.

Hitherto we have superficially compared THE FAIRIES' SABBATH and the FAIRY TUTOR. We now wish to develope a profounder analogy connecting them. We have compared them, as if ESTHETICALLY; we would now compare them MYTHOLOGICALLY—for, in our understanding, there lies at the very foundation of both tales A MYTHOLOGICAL ROOT—by whomsoever set, whether by Ernst Willkomm to-day, or by the population of the Lusatian mountains—three, six, ten centuries ago; or, in unreckoned antiquity, by the common Ancestors of the believers, who, in still unmeasured antiquity, brought the superstition of the Fairies out of central Asia to remote occidental Europe.

This ROOT we are bold to think is—"A DEEPLY SEATED ATTRACTION, ALLYING THE FAIRY MIND TO THE PURITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE MORAL WILL IN THE MIND OF MEN." And first for the Tale which presently concerns us:—THE FAIRY TUTOR.

SWEETFLOWER will beguile us into believing that the interposition of the Fairies in our Baroness's domestic arrangements, grows up, if one shall so hazardously speak, from TWO seeds, each bearing two branches—namely, from two wrongs, the one hitting, the other striking from, themselves—BOTH which wrongs they will AVENGE and AMEND. We take up a strenuous theory; and we deny—and we defy—SWEETFLOWER. Nay, more! Should our excellent friend, ERNST WILLKOMM, be found taking part, real or apparent, with SWEETFLOWER, we defy and we deny Ernst Willkomm. For in this mixed case of the Fairy wrong, we distinguish, first, INJURIES which shall be retaliated, and, as far as may be, compensated; and secondly, a SHREW, who is to be turned into a WIFE, being previously turned out of a shrew.

We dare to believe that this last-mentioned end is the thing uppermost, and undermost, and middlemost in the mind of the Fairies; is, in fact, the true and the sole final cause of all their proceedings.

Or that the moral heart of the poem—that root in the human breast and will, from which every true poem springs heavenward—is here the zeal of the spirits for morally reforming Swanhilda; is, therefore, that deep-seated attraction, which, as we have averred, essentially allies the inclination of the Fairies to the moral conscience in our own kind.

One end, therefore, grounds the whole story, although two and more are proposed by Sweetflower. It is one that satisfies the moral reason in man; for it is no less than to cleanse and heal the will, wounded with error, of a human creature. That other, which he displays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtrodden fairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into the sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the thing itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of the fancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity—a panic of caps and cloaks. We laugh—we cannot help it—as the pigmy assembly flies a thousand ways at once—grave councillors and all—throwing terrified somersets—hiding 086under stones, roots—diving into coney-burrows—"any where—any where"—vanishing out of harm's—if not out of dismay's—reach. In a tale of the Fairies, THE FANCY rules:—and the interest of such a misfortune, definite and not infinite, is congenial to the spirit of the gay faculty which hovers over, lives upon surfaces, and which flees abysses; which thence, likewise, in the moral sphere, is equal to apprehending resentment of a personal wrong, and a judicial assessment of damages—but NOT A DISINTERESTED MORAL END.

What is our conclusion then? plainly that the dolorous overthrow of the fairy divan is no better than an invention—the device of an esthetical artist. We hold that Ernst Willkomm has gratuitously bestowed upon us the disastrous catastrophe; that he has done this, knowing the obligation which lies upon Fancy within her own chosen domain to create, because—there, Fancy listens and reads. The adroit Fairy delineator must wile over and reconcile the most sportive, capricious, and self-willed spirit of our understanding, to accept a purpose foreign to that spirit's habitual sympathies—a purpose solemn and austere—THE MORAL PURPOSE OF RESCUING A SIN-ENTANGLED HUMAN SOUL.

Or, if Ernst Willkomm shall guarantee to us, that the reminiscences of his people have furnished him with the materials of this tale; if he is, as we must needs hope, who have freely dealt with you to believe that he is—honest: honest both as to the general character, and the particular facts of his representations—if, in short, the Lusatian Highlanders do, sitting by the bench and the stove, aver and protest that the said Swanhilda did overturn both council-board and councillors—then we say, upon this occasion, that which we must all, hundreds of times, declare—namely, that The Genius of Tradition is the foremost of artists; and further, that in this instance an unwilled fiction, determined by a necessity of the human bosom, has risen up to mantle seriousness with grace, as a free woodbine enclasps with her slender-gadding twines, and bedecks with her sweet bright blossoms, a towering giant of the grove.

It will perhaps be objected, that the moral purity and goodness that are so powerful to draw to themselves the regard and care of the spiritual people, are wanting in the character of the over-bold Swanhilda. We have said that her faults are the CALL to the Fairies for help and reformation: but we may likewise guess that Virtue and Truth first won their love. It must be recollected that the faults which are extirpated from the breast of our heroine, are not such as, in our natural understanding of humanity, dishonour or sully. Taken away, the character may stand clear. It is quite possible that this gone, there shall be left behind a kind, good, affectionate, generous, noble nature.

We are free, or, more properly speaking, we are bound to believe, that thus the Fairies left Swanhilda.

As for Maud, we know—for she was told—that the Fairies loved her for herself ere they needed her aid. Hanging as it were upon that wondrous power to help which dwelt within her—her simple goodness—may we not say that the Fairies discover an ENFORCED attraction, when they afterwards approach the maiden for their own succour and salvation; as they do, a FREE attraction, when, in the person of Swanhilda, they disinterestedly attach themselves to reforming a fault for the welfare and happiness of her whom it aggrieves?

We will now proceed, as in our former communication, to adduce instances from other quarters, confirming the fairy delineations offered by our tale; or which may tend generally to bring out its mythological and literary character.

Two points would suggest themselves to us in the tale of the Fairy Tutor, as chiefly provoking comparison. The first is:—The affirmed Presidency of the Fairies over human morals, viewed as a Shape of the Interest which they take in the uprightness and purity of the human will.

The second is:— The Manner and Style of their operations: or, THE FAIRY WAYS. In which we chiefly distinguish—1, The active presence of the Sprites in a human habitation. 2, Their masquerading. 3, Their dispatch of human victuals. 4, The liability of Elfin 087limbs to human casualties. 5, The personality of that saucy Puck, our tiny ambassador elf.

We are at once tempted and restrained by the richness of illustration, which presents itself under all these heads. The necessity of limitation is, however, imperious. This, and a wish for simplicity, dispose us to throw all under one more comprehensive title.

Perhaps the reader has not entirely forgotten that in the remarks introductory to THE FAIRIES' SABBATH, having launched the question—what is a Fairy?—we offered him in the way of answer, eight elements of the Fairy Nature. Has he quite forgotten that for one of these—it was the third—we represented the Spirit under examination, as ONE WHICH AT ONCE SEEKS AND SHUNS MANKIND?

The cursory treatment of this Elfin criterion will now compendiously place before the reader, as much illustration of the two above-given heads as we dare impose upon him.

The popular Traditions of entire Western Europe variously attest for all the kinds of the Fairies, and for some orders of Spirits partaking of the Fairy character, the singularly composed, and almost self-contradictory traits of a seeking implicated and attempered with a shunning; of a shunning with a seeking. The inclination of our Quest will be to evidences of the seeking. The shunning will, it need not be doubted, take good care of itself.

1. Recognised—in their GENERIC DESIGNATIONS.
2. Apparent—in their GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD with us.
3. IN THEIR FREQUENTING AND ESTABLISHING THEMSELVES in the places of our habitual occupancy and resort.
4. IN THEIR CALLING OR CARRYING US into the places of their Occupancy and Resort; whether to return hither, or to remain there.
5. BY THEIR ALIGHTING UPON THE PATH, worn already with some blithe or some weary steps, OF A HUMAN DESTINY;—as friendly, or as unfriendly Genii.
We collect the proofs: and—

1. Of their GENERIC APPELLATIVES, a Word!

One is tempted to say that THE NATIONS, as if conscious of the kindly disposition inhering in the spiritual existences toward ourselves, have simultaneously agreed in conferring upon them titles of endearment and affection. The brothers Grimm write—"In Scotland they [The Fairies] are called The Good People, Good Neighbours, Men of Peace; in Wales—The Family, The Blessing of their Mothers, The Dear Ladies; in the old Norse, and to this day in the Faroe islands, Huldufolk (The Gracious People;) in Norway, Huldre;²³ and, in conformity with these denominations, discover a striving to be in the proximity of men, and to keep up a good understanding with them."²⁴

2. THIS GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD, to which these last words point, is interestingly depicted by the Traditions.

In Scotland and Germany the Fairies plant their habitation adjoining that of man—"under the threshold"—and in such attached Fairies an alliance is unfolded with us of a most extraordinary kind. "The closest connexion" (id est, of the Fairy species with our own) "is expressed," say the Brothers Grimm, "by the tradition, agreeably to which the family of the Fairies ORDERED ITSELF ENTIRELY AFTER THE HUMAN to which it belonged; and OF WHICH IT WAS AS IF A COPY. These domestic Fairies kept their marriages upon the same day as the Human Beings; their children were born 088upon the same day; and upon the same day they wailed for their dead."²⁵

Two artlessly sweet breathings of Elfin Table, from the Helvetian Dales,²⁶ lately revived to your fancy the sinless—blissful years, when gods with men set fellowing steps upon one and the same fragrant and unpolluted sward, until transgression, exiling those to their own celestial abodes, left these lonely—a nearer, dearer, BARBARIAN Golden Age—wherein the kindly Dwarf nation stand representing the great deities of Olympus.

GERMAN TRADITIONS

No. CXLIX The Dwarfs' Feet.

"In old times the men dwelt in the valley, and round about them, in caves and clefts of the rock, the Dwarfs, in amity and good neighbourhood with the people, for whom they performed by night many a heavy labour. When the country folk, betimes in the morning, came with wains and implements, and wondered that all was ready done, the Dwarfs were hiding in the bushes, and laughed out loud. Frequently the peasants were angry when they saw their yet hardly ripe corn lying reaped upon the field; but when presently after hail and storm came on, and they could well know that probably not a stalk should have escaped perishing, they were then heartily thankful to the provident Dwarfs. At last, however, the inhabitants, by their sin, fooled away the grace and favour of the Dwarfs. These fled, and since then has no eye ever again beheld them. The cause was this following:—A herdsman had upon the mountain an excellent cherry-tree. One summer, as the fruit grew ripe, it befell that the tree was, for three following nights, picked, and the fruit carried, and fairly spread out in the loft, in which the herdsman had use to keep his cherries. The people said in the village, that doth no one other than the honest dwarflings—they come tripping along by night, in long mantles, with covered feet, softly as birds, and perform diligently for men the work of the day. Already often have they been privily watched, but one may not interrupt them, only let them, come and go at their listing. By such speeches was the herdsman made curious, and would fain have wist wherefore the Dwarfs hid so carefully their feet, and whether these were otherwise shapen than men's feet. When, therefore, the next year, summer again came, and the season that the Dwarfs did stealthily pluck the cherries, and bear them into the garner, the herdsman took a sackful of ashes, which he strewed round about the tree. The next morning, with daybreak, he hied to the spot; the tree was regularly gotten, and he saw beneath in the ashes the print of many geese's feet. Thereat the herdsman fell a-laughing, and made game, that the mystery of the Dwarfs was bewrayed; but these presently after brake down and laid waste their houses, and fled deeper away into their mountain. They harbour ill-will toward men, and withhold from them their help. That herdsman which had betrayed the Dwarfs turned sickly and half-witted, and so continued until his dying day!"

There! Plucked amidst the lap of the Alps from its own hardily-nursed wild-brier, by the same tenderly-diligent hand²⁷ that brought home to us those other half-disclosed twin-buds of Helvetian tradition, you behold a third, like pure, more expanded blossom. Twine the three, young poet! into one soft-hued and "odorous chaplet," ready and meet for binding the smooth clear forehead of a Swiss Maud!—or fix it amidst the silken curls of thine own dove-eyed, innocent, nature-loving—Ellen or Margaret.

These old-young things—bequests, as they look to be—from the loving, 089singing childhood of the earth, may lawfully make children, lovers, and songsters of us all; and will, if we are fond, and hearken to them.

"When the world and love were young,

And truth on every shepherd's tongue,"

the men and the Dwarfs had unbroken intercourse of borrowing and lending. Many traditions touch the matter. Here is one resting upon it.

No. CLIV. The Dwarfs near Dardesheim.

"Dardesheim is a little town betwixt Halberstadt and Brunswick. Close to the north-east side, a spring of the clearest water flows, which is called the Smansborn,²⁸ and wells from a hill wherein formerly the Dwarfs dwelled. When the ancient inhabitants of the place needed a holiday dress, or any rare utensil for a marriage, they betook them to this Dwarf's Hill, knocked thrice, and with a well audible voice, told their occasion, adding—

'Early a-morrow, ere sun-light,

At the hill's door, lieth all aright.'

The Dwarfs held themselves for well requited if somewhat of the festival meats were set for them by the hill. Afterward gradually did bickerings interrupt the good understanding that was betwixt the Dwarfs' nation and the country folk. At the beginning for a short season; but, in the end, the Dwarfs departed away; because the flouts and gibes of many boors grew intolerable to them, as likewise their ingratitude for kindnesses done. Thenceforth none seeth or heareth any Dwarfs more."

In Auvergne, Miss Costello has just now learned, how the men and the Fairies anciently lived upon the friendliest footing, nigh one another: how the knowledge and commodious use of the Healing Springs was owed by the former to these Good Neighbours: how, of yore, the powerful sprites, by rending athwart a huge rocky mound, opened an innocuous channel for the torrent, which used with its overflow to lay desolate arable ground and pasturage: how they were looked upon as being, in a general sense, the protectors against harm of the country: and, in fine, how the two orders of neighbours lived in long and happy communion of kind offices with one another; until, upon one unfortunate day, the ill-renowned freebooter, Aymerigot Marcel, with his ruffianly men-at-arms, having approached, by stealth, from his near-lying hold, stormed the romantically seated rock-mansion of the bountiful pigmies: who, scared, and in anger, forsook the land. Ever since the foul outrage, only a straggler may, now and then, be seen at a distance.

Thus, too, the late Brillat-Savarin, from a sprightly, acute, brilliant Belles-letteriste, turned, for an hour, honest antiquary, lets us know how, upon the southern bank of the Rhone, flowing out from Switzerland, in the narrowly-bounded and, when he first quitted it, yet hidden valley of his birth:—The FAIRIES—elderly, not beautiful, but benevolent unmarried ladies—kept, while time was, open school in THE GROTTO, which was their habitation, for the young girls of the vicinity, whom they taught—SEWING.

3. We go on to exemplifying—ELFIN Frequentation of, and Settlement with, MAN.

The Fairies are drawn into the houses and to the haunts of men by manifold occasions and impulses. They halt on a journey. They celebrate marriages. They use the implements of handicraft. They purchase at the Tavern—from the Shambles, or in open Market. They steal from oven and field. They go through a house, blessing the rooms, the marriage-bed—and stand beside the unconscious cradle. They give dreams. They take part in the evening mirth. They pray in the churches. They 090seem to work in the mines. Drawn by magical constraint into the garden, they invite themselves within doors. They dance in the churchyard.²⁹ They make themselves the wives and the paramours of men; or the serviceable hobgoblin fixes himself, like a cat, in the house—once and for ever.

We present traditions for illustrating some of these points, as they offer themselves to us.

THEY HALT ON A JOURNEY.

No. XXXV. The Count of Hoia.

"There did appear once to a count of Hoia, a little mauling in the night, and, as the count was alarmed, said to him he should have no fear: he had a word to sue unto him, and begged that he should not be denied. The count answered, if it were a thing possible to do, and should be never burthensome to him and his, he will gladly do it. The manling said—'There be some that desire to come to thee this ensuing night, into thy house, and to make their stopping. Wouldst thou so long lend them kitchen and hall, and bid thy domestics that they go to bed, and none look after their ways and works, neither any know thereof, save only thou? They will show them, therefore, grateful. Thou and thy line shall have cause of joy, and in the very least matter shall none hurt happen unto thee, neither to any that belong to thee.' Whereunto the count assented. Accordingly, upon the following night, they came like a cavalcade, marching over the drawbridge to the house; one and all—tiny folk, such as they use to describe the hill manlings. They cooked in the kitchen, fell too, and rested, and nothing seemed otherwise than as if a great repast were in preparing. Thereafter, nigh unto morn, as they will again depart, comes the little manling a second time to the count, and after conning him thanks, handed him a sword, a salamander cloth, and a golden ring, in which was RED LION set above—advertising him, withal, that he and his posterity shall well keep these three pieces, and so long as they had them all together, should it go with fair accordance and well in the county; but so soon as they shall be parted from one another, shall it be a sign that nothing good impendeth for the county. Accordingly, the red lion ever after, when any of the stem is near the point of dying, hath been seen to wax wan.

"Howsoever, at the time that Count Job and his brothers were minors, and Francis of Halle governor in the country, two of the pieces—viz., the Sword and the Salamander Cloth, were taken away; but the Ring remained with the lordship unto an end. Whither it afterwards went is not known."

THEY HOLD A WEDDING.

No.XXXI. The Small People's Wedding Feast.

"The small people of the Eulenberg in Saxony would once hold a marriage, and for this purpose slipped in, in the night, through the keyhole and the window-chinks into the Hall, and came leaping down upon the smooth floor, like peas tumbled out upon the threshing-floor. The old Count, who slept in the high canopy bed in the Hall, awoke, and marvelled at the number of tiny companions; one of whom, in the garb of a herald, now approached him, and in well-set 091phrase, courteously prayed him to bear part in their festivity. 'Yet one thing,' he added, 'we beg of you. Ye shall alone be present; none of your court shall be bold to gaze upon our mirth—yea, not so much as with a glance.' The old Count answered pleasantly—'Since ye have once for all waked me up, I will e'en make one among you.' Hereupon was a little wifikin led up to him, little torch-bearers took their station, and a music of crickets struck up. The Count had much ado to save losing his little partner in the dance; she capered about so nimbly, and ended with whirling him round and round, until hardly might he have his breath again. But, in the midst of the jocund measure, all stood suddenly still; the music ceased, and the whole throng hurried to the cracks in the doors, mouse-holes, and hiding-places of all sorts. The newly-married couple only, the heralds, and the dancers, looked upward towards an orifice that was in the hall ceiling, and there descried the visage of the old Countess, who was curiously prying down upon the mirthful doings. Herewith they made their obeisance to the Count; and the same which had bidden him, again stepping forward, thanked him for his hospitality. 'But,' continued he, 'because our pleasure and our wedding hath been in such sort interrupted, that yet another eye of man hath looked thereon, henceforward shall your house number never more than seven Eulenbergs.' Thereupon, they pressed fast forth, one upon another. Presently all was quiet, and the old Count once again alone in the dark Hall. The curse hath come true to this hour, so as ever one of the six living knights of Eulenberg hath died ere the seventh was born."

THEY JOIN THE EVENING MIRTH.

No. xxxix. The Hill-Manling at the Dance.

"Old folks veritable declared, that some years ago, at Glass, in Dorf, an hour from the Wunderberg, and an hour from the town of Salzburg, a wedding was kept, to which, towards evening, a Hill-Manling came out of the Wunderberg. He exhorted all the guests to be in honour, gleesome, and merry, and requested leave to join the dancers, which was not refused him. He danced accordingly, with modest maidens, one and another; evermore, three dances with each, and that with a singular featness; insomuch that the wedding guests looked on with admiration and pleasure. The dance over, he made his thanks, and bestowed upon either of the young married people three pieces of money that were of an unknown coinage; whereof each was held to be worth four kreuzers; and therewithal admonished them to dwell in peace and concord, live Christianly, and piously walking, to bring up their children in all goodness. These coins they should put amongst their money, and constantly remember him—so should they seldom fall into hardship. But they must not therewithal grow arrogant, but, of their superfluity, succour their neighbours.

"This Hill-Manling stayed with them into the night, and took of every one to drink and to eat what they proffered; but from every one only a little. He then paid his courtesy, and desired that one of the wedding guests might take him over the river Salzbach toward the mountain. Now, there was at the marriage a boatman, by name John Standl, who was presently ready, and they went down together to the ferry. During the passage, the ferryman asked his meed. The Hill-Manling tendered him, in all humility, three pennies. The waterman scorned at such mean hire; but the Manling gave him for answer—'He must not vex himself, but safely store up the three pennies; for, so doing, he should never suffer default of his having—if only he did restrain presumptousness—at the same time he gave the boatman a little pebble, saying the words—'If thou shalt hang this about thy neck, thou shalt not possibly perish in the water.' Which was proved in that same year. Finally, he persuaded him to a godly and humble manner of life, and went swiftly away." 092

ANOTHER OF THE SAME.

No. CCCVI. The Three Maidens from the Mere.

"At Epfenbach, nigh Sinzheim, within men's memory, three wondrously beautiful damsels, attired in white, visited, with every evening, the village spinning-room. They brought along with them ever new songs and tunes, and new pretty tales and games. Moreover, their distaffs and spindles had something peculiar, and no spinster might so finely and nimbly spin the thread. But upon the stroke of eleven, they arose; packed up their spinning gear, and for no prayers might be moved to delay for an instant more. None wist whence they came, nor whither they went. Only they called them, The Maidens from the Mere; or, The Sisters of the Lake. The lads were glad to see them there, and were taken with love of them; but most of all, the schoolmaster's son. He might never have enough of hearkening and talking to them, and nothing grieved him more than that every night they went so early away. The thought suddenly crossed him, and he set the village clock an hour back; and, in the evening, with continual talking and sporting, not a soul perceived the delay of the hour. When the clock struck eleven—but it was properly twelve—the three damsels arose, put up their distaffs and things, and departed. Upon the following morrow, certain persons went by the Mere; they heard a wailing, and saw three bloody spots above upon the surface of the water. Since that season, the sisters came never again to the room. The schoolmaster's son pined, and died shortly thereafter."

AN ELFIN IS BOUND, IN UNLAWFUL CHAINS, TO A HUMAN LOVER.

No. LXX. The Bushel, the Ring, and the Goblet.

"In the duchy of Lorraine, when it belonged, as it long did, to Germany, the last count of Orgewiler ruled betwixt Nanzig and Luenstadt.³⁰ He had no male heir of his blood, and upon his deathbed, shared his lands amongst his three daughters and sons-in-law. Simon of Bestein had married the eldest daughter, the lord of Crony the second, and a German Rhinegrave the youngest. Beside the lordships, he also distributed to his heirs three presents; to the eldest daughter a BUSHEL, to the middle one a DRINKING-CUP, and to the third a jewel, which was a RING, with an admonition that they and their descendants should carefully hoard up these pieces, so should their houses be constantly fortunate."

The tradition, how the things came into the possession of the count, the Marshal of Bassenstein,³¹ great-grandson of Simon, does himself relate thus:—³²

"The count was married: but he had beside a secret amour with a marvellous beautiful woman, which came weekly to him every Monday, into a summer-house in the garden. This commerce remained long concealed from his wife. When he withdrew from her side, he pretended to her, that he went, by night, into the Forest, to the Stand.

"But when a few years had thus passed, the countess took a suspicion, and was minded to learn the right truth. One summer morning early, she slipped after him, and came to the summer bower. She there saw her husband, sleeping in the arms of a wondrous fair female; but because they both slept so sweetly, she would not awaken them; but she took her veil 093from her head, and spread it over the feet of both, where they lay asleep.

"When the beautiful paramour awoke, and perceived the veil, she gave a loud cry, began pitifully to wail, and said:—

"'Henceforwards, my beloved, we see one another never more. Now must I tarry at a hundred leagues' distance away, and severed from thee.'

"Therewith she did 1eave the count, but presented him first with those afore-named three gifts for his three daughters, which they should never let go from them.

"The House of Bassenstein, for long years, had a toll, to draw in fruit, from the town of Spinal,³³ whereto this Bushel was constantly used."

THE HOUSEHOLD SPIRIT DOES HOUSEHOLD SERVICE IN A MILL.

No. LXXIII. The Kobold in the Mill.

"Two students did once fare afoot from Rintel. They purposed putting up for the night in a village; but for as much as there did a violent rain fall, and the darkness grew upon them, so as they might no further forward, they went up to a near-lying mill, knocked, and begged a night's quarters. The miller was, at the first, deaf, but yielded, at the last, to their instant entreaty, opened the door, and brought them into a room. They were hungry and thirsty both; and because there stood upon a table a dish with food, and a mug of beer, they begged the miller for them, being both ready and willing to pay; but the miller denied them—would not give them even a morsel of bread, and only the hard bench for their night's bed.

"'The meat and the drink,' said he, 'belong to the Household Spirit. If ye love your lives, leave them both untouched. But else have ye no harm to fear. If there chance a little din in the night, be ye but still and sleep.'

"The two students laid themselves down to sleep; but after the space of an hour or the like, hunger did assail the one so vehemently that he stood up and sought after the dish. The other, a Master of Arts, warned him to leave to the Devil what was the Devil's due; but he answered, 'I have a better right than the Devil to it'—seated himself at the table, and ate to his heart's content, so that little was left of the cookery. After that, he laid hold of the can, took a good Pomeranian pull, and having thus somewhat appeased his desire, he laid himself again down to his companion; but when, after a time, thirst anew tormented him, he again rose up, and pulled a second so hearty draught, that he left the Household Spirit only the bottoms. After he had thus cheered and comforted himself, he lay down and fell asleep.

"All remained quiet on to midnight; but hardly was this well by, when the Kobold came banging in with so loud coil,³⁴ that both sleepers awoke in great fright. He bounced a few times to and fro about the room, then seated himself as if to enjoy his supper at the table, and they could plainly hear how he pulled the dish to him. Immediately he set it, as though in ill humour, hard down again, laid hold of the can, pressed up the lid, but straightway let it clap sharply to again. He now fell to his work; he wiped the table, next the legs of the table, carefully down, and then swept, as with a besom, the door diligently. When this was done, he returned to visit once more the dish and the beercan, if his luck might be any better this turn, but once more pushed both angrily away. Thereupon he proceeded in his labour, came to the benches, washed, scoured, rubbed them, below and above. When he 094came to the place where the two students lay, he passed them over, and worked on beyond their feet. When this was done, he began upon the bench a second time above their heads; and, for the second time likewise, passed over the visitants. But the third time, when he came to them, he stroked gently the one which had nothing tasted, over the hair and along the whole body, without any whit hurting him; but the other he griped by the feet, dragged him two or three times round the room upon the floor, till at the last he left him lying, and ran behind the stove, whence he laughed him loudly to scorn. The student crawled back to the bench; but in a quarter of an hour the Kobold began his work anew, sweeping, cleaning, wiping. The two lay there quaking with fear:—the one he felt quite softly over, when he came to him; but the other he flung again upon the ground, and again broke out, at the back of the stove, into a flouting horse-laugh.

"The students now no longer chose to lie upon the bench, rose, and set up, before the closed and locked door, a loud outcry; but none took any heed to it. They were at length resolved to lay themselves down close together upon the flat floor; but the Kobold left them not in peace. He began, for the third time, his game:—came and lugged the guilty one about, laughed, and scoffed him. He was now fairly mad with rage, drew his sword, thrust and cut into the corner whence the laugh rang, and challenged the Kobold with bravadoes, to come on. He then sat down, his weapon in his hand, upon the bench, to await what should further befall; but the noise ceased, and all remained still.

"The miller upbraided them upon the morrow, for that they had not conformed themselves to his admonishing, neither had left the victuals untouched. It was as much as their two lives were worth."

Three heads only of the ATTRACTION, above imputed to the Fairies towards our own kind, have been here imperfectly brought out; and already the narrowness of our limits warns us—with a sigh given to the traditions crowding upon us from all countries, and which we perforce leave unused—to bring these preliminary remarks to a close. Still, something has been gained for illustrating our Tale. The Hill-Manling at the dance diligently warns against PRIDE—the rank ROOT evil which the Fairies will weed out from the bosom of our heroine, whilst throughout a marked feature of the Fairy ways—"THE ACTIVE PRESENCE OF THE SPIRITS IN A HUMAN HABITATION" has forced itself upon us, in diverse, and some, perhaps, unexpected forms.

And still, our fuller examples, coming to us wholly from the Collection of the Two Brothers, and expressing the habitudes of various WIGHTS and ELVES, may furnish, for comparison with Ernst Willkomm's Upper Lusatian, an EXTRA Lusatian picture of the TEUTONIC FAIRYHOOD.

THE FAIRY TUTOR.

"In days of yore there lived, alone in her castle, a maiden named Swanhilda. She was the only child of a proud father, lately deceased. Her mother she had lost when she was but a child; so that the education of the daughter had fallen wholly into the hands of the father.

"During the lifetime even of the old knight, many suitors had offered themselves for Swanhilda; but she seemed to be insensible to every tender emotion, and dismissed with disdainful haughtiness the whole body of wooers. Meanwhile she hunted the stag and the board, and performed squire's service for her gradually declining parent. This manner of life was so entirely to the taste of the maiden, notwithstanding that in delicacy of frame, and in bewitching gracefulness of figure, she gave place to none of her sex, that when at length her father died, she took upon herself the management of the castle, and lived aloof in pride and independence, in the very fashion of an Amazon. Maugre 095the many refusals which Swanhilda had already distributed on every side, there still flocked to her loving knights, eager to wed; but, like their predecessors, they were all sent drooping home again. The young nobility could at last bear this treatment no longer; and they, one and all, resolved either to constrain the supercilious damsel to wedlock, or to make her smart for a refusal. An embassy was dispatched, charged with notifying this resolution to the mistress of the castle. Swanhilda heard the speakers quietly to the end; but her answer was tuned as before, or indeed rang harsher and more offensive than ever. Turning her back upon the embassy, she left them to depart, scorned and ashamed.

"In the night following the day upon which this happened, Swanhilda was disturbed out of her sleep by a noise which seemed to her to ascend from her chamber floor; but let her strain her eyes as she might, she could for a long while discern nothing. At length she observed, in the middle of the room, a straying sparkle of light, that threw itself over and over like a tumbler, tittering, at the same time, like a human being. Swanhilda for a while kept herself quiet; but as the luminous antic ceased not practising his harlequinade, she peevishly exclaimed—'What buffoon is carrying on his fooleries here? I desire to be left in peace.' The light vanished instantly, and Swanhilda already had congratulated herself upon gaining her point, when suddenly a loud shrilly sound was heard—the floor of the apartment gave way, and from the gap there arose a table set out with the choicest viands. It rested upon a lucid body of air, upon which the tiny attendants skipped with great agility to and fro, waiting upon seated guests. At first Swanhilda was so amazed that her breath forsook her; but becoming by degrees somewhat collected, she observed, to her extreme astonishment, that an effigy of herself sat at the strange table, in the midst of the numerous train of suitors, whom she had so haughtily dismissed. The attendants presented to the young knights the daintiest dishes, the savour of which came sweetly-smelling enough to the nostrils of the proud damsel. As often, however, as the knights were helped to meat and drink, the figure of Swanhilda at the board was presented by an ill-favoured Dwarf, who stood as her servant behind her, with an empty basket, whereat the suitor's broke out into wild laughter. She also soon became aware, that as many courses were served up to the guests as she had heretofore dispensed refusals, and the amount of these was certainly not small.

"Swanhilda, weary of the absurd phantasmagoria, was going to speak again; but to her horror she discovered that the power of speech had left her. She had for some time been struck with a kind of whispering and tittering about her. In order to make out whence this proceeded, she leaned out of her bed, and, peering between the silk curtains, perceived two smart diminutive cupbearers, in garments of blue, with green aprons, and small yellow caps. She had scarcely got sight of the little gentlemen when their whispering took the character of audible words; and the dumb Swanhilda was enabled to overhear the following discourse:

"'But, I pri'thee, tell me, Sweetflower, how this show shall end?' said one of the two cupbearers,—'thou art, we know, the confidant of our queen, and, certes, canst disclose to me somewhat of her plans?'

"'That can I, my small-witted Monsieur Silverfine,' answered Sweetflower. 'Know, therefore, that this sweet and lovely to behold brute of a girl, is now beginning to suffer the castigation due to her innumerable offences. Swanhilda has sinned against all maidenly modesty, has borne herself proud and overbearing towards honourable gentlemen, and, besides, has most seriously offended our queen.'

"'By storming on her Barbary steed, like the devil himself, through the thick of our States' Assembly, pounding the arms and legs of I don't know how many of our sapient representatives. What makes the matter worse is, that this happened at the very opening of the diet, and whilst the grand prelusive symphony of the whole hidden people was in full burst. We were sitting by hundreds of thousands 096upon blades, stalks, and leaves; some of us still actively busied arranging comfortable seats for the older people in the blue harebells. For this we had stripped the skins of sixty thousand red field spiders, and wrought them into canopies and hangings. All our talented performers had tuned their instruments, scraped, fluted, twanged, jingled, and shawmed to their hearts' content, and had resined their fiddlesticks upon the freshest of dewdrops. All at once, tearing out of the wood, with your leave, or without your leave, comes this monster of a girl, plump upon upper house and lower house together. Ah, lack-a-daisy! what a massacre it was! The first hoof struck a thousand of our prime orators dead upon the spot, the other three hoofs scattered the Imperial diet in all directions, and, what is worse than all, tore to pieces a multitude of our exquisite caps. Our queen was almost frantic at the breach of the peace—she stamped with her foot, and cried out, "LIGHTNING!" and what that means we all pretty well know. Just at this time, too, she received information of the maiden's arrogant behaviour towards her suitors, and on the instant she determined to put the sinner to her prayers. We began by devouring every thing clean up, giving her the pleasure of looking on.'

"'Silly, absurd creatures!' thought Swanhilda, as the little butler advanced to the table to put on some fresh wine. During his absence she had time to note how perhaps a dozen other Fairies drew up through the floor whole pailfuls of wine and smoking meats, which were conveyed immediately to the table, and there consumed as if by the wind. She was heartily longing for the day to dawn, that the sun might dissipate her dream, when the sprightly little speaker came to his place again.

"'Now we can gossip a little longer,' said Sweetflower. 'My guests are provided for, and between this and cock-crow—when house and cellar will be emptied—there's some time yet.'

"Swanhilda uttered (mentally) a prodigious imprecation, and turned herself so violently in the bed, that the little gentlemen were absolutely terrified.

"'No such thing!' answered Sweetflower. 'The amiable young lady in bed there has seen the sport perhaps, and is very likely not altogether pleased with it.'

"'Don't you think she would speak, if she saw all this wastefulness going on?' asked Silverfine.

"'Yes, if she could!' chuckled Sweetflower. 'But our queen has been cruel enough to strike her dumb, whilst she looks upon this heartbreaking spectacle. If she once wakes, she won't be troubled again with sleep before cock-crow.'

"'A pretty business!' thought Swanhilda, once more tossing herself passionately about in her bed.

"'Quite right!' said Sweetflower triumphantly. 'The imp of a girl has waked up.'

"'Insolent wretches!' said Swanhilda (internally.) 'Brute and imp to me! Oh, if I could only speak!'

"'Why, the whole fun of the thing is,' said Sweetflower, almost bursting with laughter, 'just that that wish won't be gratified. Does the fool of a woman think that she is to trample down our orchestra with impunity, to put our States' Assembly to flight, and to crush our very selves into a jelly!'

"'And the unbidden guests divine my very thoughts!' thought Swanhilda. 'Upon my life, it looks as if a spice of omniscience had really crept under their caps!'

"'And there, my prudent damsel, you show a good discretion,' returned Sweetflower, saluting her with an ironical bow.

"'How will it be, then, with our caps?' enquired Silverfine. 'Are they to be repaired?'

"'Oh, certainly,' returned Sweetflower; 'and that will cost our Amazon here more than all. Indeed, the conditions of her punishment are, to make good the caps, to pledge her troth to one of her despised suitors, to compensate the rest with magnificent gifts, and, for the future, never to mount hunter more, but to amble upon a gentle palfrey, as a lady should. 097And, till all this is done, am I to have the teaching of her.'

"'Pretty conditions truly!' thought Swanhilda. 'I would rather die than keep them.'

"'Just as you please, most worthy madam,' answered Sweetflower; 'but you'll think better of it yet, perhaps.'

"'It will fall heavy enough upon her,' said Silverfine, 'seeing that we have it in command to seize upon all the lady's treasures.'

"'Capital, capital!' shouted Sweetflower. 'That's peppering the punishment truly! For now must this haughty man-hating creature go about begging, catching and carrying fish to market, and so submitting herself to the scorn and laughter of all her former lovers, till her trade makes her rich again. Nothing but luck in fishing will our queen vouchsafe the audacious madam. Three years are allowed her. But, in the interim, she must starve and famish like a white mouse learning to dance.'

"At this moment a monstrous burst of laughter roared from the table. The guests sang aloud—

"'The last flagon we end,

Swanhilda shall mend;

Huzza, knights, and drink

To the last dollar's chink!'

"As the song ceased, the table descended, the floor closed up, and stillness was in the room again, as when the lady had first retired to her couch. The cock crew, and Swanhilda fell into a deep sleep.

"When it left her, the sun already shone high and bright, and played on her silken bed-curtains. She rubbed her eyes, and seeing every thing about her in its usual state, she concluded that what had happened was nothing worse than a feverish dream. She now arose, began dressing herself, and would have allayed her waking thirst, but she could find neither glass nor water-pitcher. She called angrily to her waiting-woman.

"'How come you to forget water, blockhead?' she exclaimed; 'get some quickly, and then—Breakfast!'

"The attendant departed, shaking her head; for she knew well enough that every thing had been put in order as usual on the evening before. She very quickly returned, frightened out of her wits, and hardly able to speak.

"'Is it possible?' said Swanhilda. 'Your eyes have surely deceived you! But never mind—bring up my breakfast. A ham and two Pomeranian geese-breasts.'

"'Alack! gracious lady!' answered the girl, sobbing, 'every thing in the house is gone too! The wine-casks lie in pieces on the cellar floor; the stalls are empty; your favourite horse is away—hay and corn rotted through. It is shocking!'

"Swanhilda dismissed her, and broke out at first into words wild and vehement. She checked them; but tears of disappointment and bitter rage forced their way in spite of her. A visit to her cellar, store-rooms, and granaries, convinced her of the horrible transformation which a night had effected in every thing that belonged to her. She found nothing every where but mould and sickly-smelling mildew; and was too soon aware that the hideous images of the night were nothing less than frightful realities. Her hardened heart stood proof; and since the whole region for leagues round was turned into a blighted brown heath, she at one resolved to die of hunger. Ere noon her few servants had deserted the castle, and Swanhilda herself hungered till her bowels growled again.

"This laudable self-castigation she persevered in for three days long, when her hunger had increased to such a pitch that she could no longer remain quiet in the castle. In a state of half consciousness, she staggered down to the lake, known far and wide by the name of the Castle mere. Here, on the glassy surface, basked the liveliest fishes. Swanhilda for a while watched in silence the disport of the happy creatures, then snatched up a hazel wand lying at her feet, round the end of which a worm had coiled, and, half maddened by the joyance of the finny tribe, struck with it into the water. A greedy fish snapped at the switch. The famishing Swanhilda clutched 098hungeringly at it, but found in her hand a piece of offensive carrion, and nothing more; whilst around, from every side, there rang such a clatter of commingled mockery and laughter, that Swanhilda vented a terrible imprecation, and shed once more—a scorching tear.

"'Oh! we shall soon have you tame enough!' said a voice straight before her, and she recognized it at once for the speaker of that miserable night. Looking about her, she perceived a moss-rose that luxuriated upon the rock. In one of the expanded buds sat a little kicking fellow, with green apron, sky-blue vest, and yellow bonnet. He was laughing right into the face of the angry miss; and, quaffing off one little flower-cup after another, filled them bravely again, and jingled with his tiny bunch of keys, as if he had been grand butler to the universe.

"'A flavour like a nosegay!' said the malicious rogue. 'Wilt hob-nob with me, maiden? What do you say? Are we adepts at sacking a house? 'Twill give thee trouble to fill thy cellars again as we found them. Take heart, girl. If you will come to, and take kindly to your angling, and do the thing that's handsome by your wooers, you shall have an eatable dinner yet up at the castle.'

"'Infamous pigmy!' exclaimed Swanhilda, lashing with her rod, as she spoke, at the little rose. The small buffeteer meanwhile had leaped down, and, in the turning of a hand, had perched himself upon the lady's nose, where he drummed an animating march with his heels.

"'Thy nose, I do protest, is excellently soft, thou wicked witch!' said the rascal. 'If thou wilt now try thy hand at fishing for the town market, thou shalt be entertained the while with the finest band of music in the world. Be good and pretty, and take up thy angling-rod. Trumpets and drums, flutes and clarinets, shall all strike up together.'

"Swanhilda tried hard to shake the jocular tormentor off, but he kept his place on the bridge as if he had grown to it. She made a snatch at him, and he bit her finger.

"'Hark'e, my damsel!' quoth Sweetflower; 'if you are so unmannerly, 'tis time for a lesson. You smarted too little when you were a young one. We must make all that good now;' and forthwith he settled himself properly upon her nose, dangling a leg on either side, like a cavalier in saddle. 'Come, my pretty, be industrious,' continued he; 'get to work, and follow good counsel.' And then he whistled a blithe and gamesome tune.

"Swanhilda, not heedlessly to prolong her own vexation, dipped the rod into the water, and immediately saw another gleaming fish wriggling at its end. A basket, delicately woven of flowers, stood beside her, half filled with clear water. The fish dropped into it of themselves. The wee companion beat meanwhile with his feet upon the wings of the lady's nose, played ten instruments or more at once, and extemporized a light rambling rhyme, wherein arch gibes and playful derision of her present forlorn estate were not unmingled with auguries of a friendlier future.

"'There, you see! where's the distress?' said the urchin, laughing. 'The basket is as full as it can hold. Off with you to the town, and when your fish are once sold, you may make yourself—some water-gruel.' With these words the elf leaped into the fish-basket, crept out again on the other side, plucked a king-cup, took seat in it, and gave the word—'Forwards!' The flower, on the instant, displayed its petals. There appeared sail and rudder to the small and delicate ship, which at once took motion, and sailed gaily through the air.

"'A prosperous market to you, Swanhilda!' cried Sweetflower, 'behave discreetly now, and do your tutor justice!'

"Swanhilda, perforce, resigned herself to her destiny. She took her basket, and carried it home, intending to disguise herself as completely as possible before making for the town. But all her clothes lay crumbling into dust. Needs must she then, harassed by hunger and thirst, begin her weary walk, equipped, as she was, in her velvet riding-habit.

"Without fatigue, surprised at her celerity—she was in the market-place. The eyes of all naturally took the direction of the well-born fisherwoman. Still pity held the tongue 099of scorn in thrall, and Swanhilda saw her basket speedily emptied. Once more within her castle walls, she beheld a running spring in the courtyard, and near it an earthen pitcher. She filled—drank—and carried the remainder to the hall, where she found a small fire burning, a pipkin, and a loaf. She submissively cooked herself a meagre pottage of bread and water, appeased the cravings of nature, and fell into a sound sleep.

"Morning came, and she awoke with thirst burning afresh. She hastened to the spring, but fountain and pitcher were no loner there. In their stead a hoarse laugh greeted her; and in the next instant she perceived the tiny butler, astride upon a cork, galloping before her across the courtyard, and addressing his pupil with another snatch of his derisive song.

"The courage of Swanhilda surmounted her wrath, and she carried her fish-basket to the lake. It was soon filled, and she again on her way to market. An amazing multitude of people were already in motion here, who presently thronged about the market-woman. The basket was nearly emptied, when two of her old suitors approached. Swanhilda was confounded, and a blush of deep shame inflamed her countenance. Curiosity and the pleasure of malice spurred them to accost her; but the sometime-haughty damsel cast her eyes upon the ground, and in answer tendered her fish for sale. The knights bought; mixing, however, ungentle gibes with their good coin. Swanhilda, at the moment, caught sight of her tutor peeping from a daisy—saluting her with his little cap, and nodding approbation.

"'I would you were in the kingdom of pepper!' thought Swanhilda, and in the next instant the fairy was running upon her nose and cheeks, most unmercifully stamping, and tickling her with a little hair till she sneezed again.

"'Stay, stay, I must teach thee courtesy, if I can. What! a profane swearer too! Wish me in the kingdom of pepper! We'll have pepper growing on thy soft cheeks here. There, there—is that pepper? Thou art rouged, my lady, ready for a ball!'

"Swanhilda turned upon her homeward way, the adhesive Elf still tripping ceaselessly about her face, and bore her infliction with a virtuous patience. In her court and hall she found, as before, the spring, the bread, and the fire. As before, she satisfied hunger and thirst, and slept—the sweeter already for her punishment and pain.

"And so passed day after day. The tricky Elf became a less severe, still trusty schoolmaster. The profits of her trading, under fairy guardianship, were great to marvelling; and it must be owned that her aversion to angling craft did not increase in proportion. As time ran on, she had encountered all her discarded knights, now singly and now in companies. A year and a half elapsed, and left the relation between suitors and maiden as at the beginning. At length a chivalric and gentle knight, noble in person as in birth, ventured to accost her, loving and reverently as in her brighter days of yore. Abashed, overcome with shame, the maiden was at the mercy of the light-winged, blithe, and watchful god, who seized his hour to enthrone himself upon her heart. She bought the fairy caps and mantles—she made honourable satisfaction to the knights, and to him whose generous constancy had won her heart, she gave a willing and a softened hand.

"Upon her wedding day, the QUIET PEOPLE did not fail to adorn the festival with their radiant presence; albeit the merry creatures played a strange cross-game on the occasion. The blissful day over, and the happy bride and bridegroom withdrawing from the banquet and the dance, the well-pleased chirping, able little tutor hopped before them, and led them to the hymeneal bower with floral flute, and gratulatory song!" 100

PORTUGAL.³⁵

The connexion of Portugal with England has been continued for so long a period, and the fortunes of Portugal have risen and fallen so constantly in the exact degree of her more intimate or more relaxed alliance with England that a knowledge of her interests, her habits, and her history, becomes an especial accomplishment of the English statesman. The two countries have an additional tie, in the similitude of their early pursuits, their original character for enterprise, and their mutual services. Portugal, like England, with a narrow territory, but that territory largely open to the sea, was maritime from her beginning; like England, her early power was derived from the discovery of remote countries; like England, she threw her force into colonization, at an era when all other nations of Europe were wasting their strength in unnecessary wars; like England, without desiring to enlarge her territory, she has preserved her independence; and, so sustain the similitude to its full extent, like England, she founded an immense colony in the western world, with which, after severing the link of government, she retains the link of a common language, policy, literature, and religion.

The growth of the great European powers at length overshadowed the prosperity of Portugal, and the usurpation of her government by Spain sank her into a temporary depression. But the native gallantry of the nation at length shook off the yoke; and a new effort commenced for her restoration to the place which she was entitled to maintain in the world. It is remarkable that, at such periods in the history of nations, some eminent individual comes forward, as if designated for the especial office of a national guide. Such an individual was the Marquis of Pombal, the virtual sovereign of Portugal for twenty-seven years—a man of talent, intrepidity, and virtue. His services were the crush of faction and the birth of public spirit, the fall of the Jesuits and the peace of his country. His inscription should be, "The Restorer of his Country."

The Marquis of Pombal was born on the 13th of May 1699, at Soure, a Portuguese village near the town of Pombal. His father, Manoel Carvalho, was a country gentleman of moderate fortune, of the rank of fidalgo de provincia—a distinction which gave him the privileges attached to nobility, though not to the title of a grandee, that honour not descending below dukes, marquises, and counts. His mother was Theresa de Mendonca, a woman of family. He had two brothers, Francis and Paul. His own names were Sebastian Joseph, to which was added that of Mello, from his maternal ancestor.

Having, like the sons of Portuguese gentlemen in general, studied for a period in the university of Coimbra, he entered the army as a private, according to the custom of the country, and rose to the rank of corporal, which he held until circumstances, and an introduction to Cardinal Motta, who was subsequently prime-minister, induced him to devote himself to the study of history, politics, and law. The cardinal, struck with his ability, strongly advised him to persevere in those pursuits, appointed him, in 1733, member of the Royal Academy of History, and shortly after, the king proposed that he should write the history of certain of the Portuguese monarchs; but this design was laid aside, and Pombal remained unemployed for six years, until, in 1739, he was sent by the cardinal to London, as Portuguese minister. He retained his office until 1745; yet it is remarkable, and an evidence of the difficulty of acquiring a new language, that Pombal, though thus living six active years in the country, was never able to acquire the English language. It must, however, be recollected, 101that at this period French was the universal language of diplomacy, the language of the court circles, and the polished language of all the travelled ranks of England. The writings, too, of the French historians, wits, and politicians, were the study of every man who pretended to good-breeding, and the only study of most; so that, to a stranger, the acquisition of the vernacular tongue could be scarcely more than a matter of curiosity. Times, however, are changed; and the diplomatist who should now come to this country without a knowledge of the language, would be despised for his ignorance of an essential knowledge, and had better remain at home. Soon after his return, he was employed in a negotiation to reconcile the courts of Rome and Vienna on an ecclesiastical claim. His reputation had already reached Vienna; and it is surmised that Maria Theresa, the empress, had desired his appointment as ambassador. His embassy was successful. At Vienna, Pombal, who was a widower, married the Countess Ernestein Daun, by whom he had two sons and three daughters. Pombal was destined to be a favourite at courts from his handsome exterior. He was above the middle size, finely formed, and with a remarkably intellectual countenance; his manners graceful, and his language animated and elegant. His reputation at Vienna was so high, that on a vacancy in the Foreign office at Lisbon, Pombal was recalled to take the portfolio in 1750. Don John, the king, died shortly after, and Don Joseph, at the age of thirty-five, ascended the throne, appointing Pombal virtually his prime-minister—a rank which he held, unshaken and unrivaled, for the extraordinary period of twenty-seven years.

The six years of unemployed and private life, which the great minister had spent in the practical study of his country, were of the most memorable service to his future administration. His six years' residence in England added practical knowledge to theoretical; and with the whole machinery of a free, active, and popular government in constant operation before his eyes, he returned to take the government of a dilapidated country. The power of the priesthood, exercised in the most fearful shape of tyranny; the power of the crown, at once feeble and arbitrary; the power of opinion, wholly extinguished; and the power of the people, perverted into the instrument of their own oppression—were the elements of evil with which the minister had to deal; and he dealt with them vigorously, sincerely, and successfully.

The most horrible tribunal of irresponsible power, combined with the most remorseless priestcraft, was the Inquisition; for it not merely punished men for obeying their own consciences, but tried them in defiance of every principle of enquiry. It not only made a law contradictory of every other law, but it established a tribunal subversive of every mode by which the innocent could be defended. It was a murderer on principle. Pombal's first act was a bold and noble effort to reduce this tribunal within the limits of national safety. By a decree of 1751, it was ordered that thenceforth no judicial burnings should take place without the consent and approval of the government, taking to itself the right of enquiry and examination, and confirming or reversing the sentence according to its own judgment. This measure decided at once the originality and the boldness of the minister: for it was the first effort of the kind in a Popish kingdom; and it was made against the whole power of Rome, the restless intrigues of the Jesuits, and the inveterate superstition of the people.

Having achieved this great work of humanity, the minister's next attention was directed to the defences of the kingdom. He found all the fortresses in a state of decay, he appropriated an annual revenue of L.7000 for their reparation; he established a national manufactory of gunpowder, it having been previously supplied by contract, and being of course supplied of the worst quality at the highest rate. He established regulations for the fisheries, he broke up iniquitous contracts, he attempted to establish a sugar refinery, and directed the attention of the people largely to the cultivation of silk. His next reformation was that of the police. The disorders of the late reign had covered the highways with robbers. Pombal instituted a police so effective, and proceeded 102with such determined justice against all disturbers of the peace, that the roads grew suddenly safe, and the streets of Lisbon became proverbial for security, at a time when every capital of Europe was infested with robbers and assassins, and when even the state of London was so hazardous, as to be mentioned in the king's speech in 1753 as a scandal to the country. The next reform was in the collection of the revenue. An immense portion of the taxes had hitherto gone into the pockets of the collectors. Pombal appointed twenty-eight receivers for the various provinces, abolished at a stroke a host of inferior officers, made the promisers responsible for the receivers, and restored the revenue to a healthy condition. Commerce next engaged his attention; he established a company to trade to the East and China, the old sources of Portuguese wealth. In the western dominions of Portugal, commerce had hitherto languished. He established a great company for the Brazil trade. But his still higher praise was his humanity. Though acting in the midst of a nation overrun with the most violent follies and prejudices of Popery, he laboured to correct the abuses of the convents; and, among the rest, their habit of retaining as nuns the daughters of the Brazilian Portuguese who had been sent over for their education. By a wise and humane decree, issued in 1765, the Indians, and a large portion of Brazil, were declared free. Expedients were adopted to civilize them, and privileges were granted to the Portuguese who should contract marriage among them. Of course those great objects were not achieved without encountering serious difficulties. The pride of the idle aristocracy, the sleepless intriguing of the Jesuits, the ignorant enthusiasm of the people, and the sluggish supremacy of the priests, were all up in arms against him. But his principle was pure, his knowledge sound, and his resolution decided. Above all, he had, in the person of the king, a man of strong mind, convinced of the necessities of change, and determined to sustain the minister. The reforms soon vindicated themselves by the public prosperity; and Pombal exercised all the powers of a despotic sovereign, in the benevolent spirit of a regenerator of his country.

But a tremendous physical calamity was now about to put to the test at once the fortitude of this great minister, and the resources of Portugal.

On the morning of All-Saints' day, the 1st of November 1755, Lisbon was almost torn up from the foundations by the most terrible earthquake on European record. As it was a high Romish festival, the population were crowding to the churches, which were lighted up in honour of the day. About a quarter before ten the first shock was felt, which lasted the extraordinary length of six or seven minutes; then followed an interval of about five minutes, after which the shock was renewed, lasting about three minutes. The concussions were so violent in both instances that nearly all the solid buildings were dashed to the ground, and the principal part of the city almost wholly ruined. The terror of the population, rushing through the falling streets, gathered in the churches, or madly attempting to escape into the fields, may be imagined; but the whole scene of horror, death, and ruin, exceeds all description. The ground split into chasms, into which the people were plunged in their fright. Crowds fled to the water; but the Tagus, agitated like the land, suddenly rose to an extraordinary height, burst upon the land, and swept away all within its reach. It was said to have risen to the height of five-and-twenty or thirty feet above its usual level, and to have sunk again as much below it. And this phenomenon occurred four times.

The despatch from the British consul stated, that the especial force of the earthquake seemed to be directly under the city; for while Lisbon was lifted from the ground, as if by the explosion of a gunpowder mine, the damage either above or below was not so considerable. One of the principal quays, to which it was said that many people had crowded for safety, was plunged under the Tagus, and totally disappeared. Ships were carried down by the shock on the river, dashes to pieces against each other, or flung upon the shore. To 103complete the catastrophe, fires broke out in the ruins, which spread over the face of the city, burned for five or six days, and reduced all the goods and property of the people to ashes. For forty days the shocks continued with more or less violence, but they had now nothing left to destroy. The people were thus kept in a constant state of alarm, and forced to encamp in the open fields, though it was now winter. The royal family were encamped in the gardens of the palace; and, as in all the elements of society had been shaken together, Lisbon and its vicinity became the place of gathering for banditti from all quarters in the kingdom. A number of Spanish deserters made their way to the city, and robberies and murders of the most desperate kind were constantly perpetrated.

During this awful period, the whole weight of government fell upon the shoulders of the minister; and he bore it well. He adopted the most active measures for provisioning the city, for repressing plunder and violence, and for enabling the population to support themselves during this period of suffering. It was calculated that seven millions sterling could scarcely repair the damage of the city; and that not less than eighty thousand lives had been lost, either crushed by the earth or swallowed up by the waters. Some conception of the native mortality may be formed from that of the English: of the comparatively small number of whom, resident at that time in Lisbon, no less than twenty-eight men and fifty women were among the sufferers.

The royal family were at the palace of Belem when this tremendous calamity occurred. Pombal instantly hastened there. He found every one in consternation. "What is to be done," exclaimed the king, as he entered "to meet this infliction of divine justice?" The calm and resolute answer of Pombal was—"Bury the dead, and feed the living." This sentence is still recorded, with honour, in the memory of Portugal.

The minister then threw himself into his carriage, and returned to the ruins. For several days his only habitation was his carriage; and from it he continued to issue regulations for the public security. Those regulations amounted to the remarkable number of two hundred; and embraced all the topics of police, provisions, and the burial of the sufferers. Among those regulations was the singular, but sagacious one, of prohibiting all persons from leaving the city without a passport. By this, those who had robbed the people, or plundered the church plate, were prevented from escaping to the country and hiding their plunder, and consequently were obliged to abandon, or to restore it. But every shape of public duty was met by this vigorous and intelligent minister. He provided for the cure of the wounded, the habitancy of the houseless, the provision of the destitute. He brought troops from the provinces for the protection of the capital, he forced the idlers to work, he collected the inmates of the ruined religious houses, he removed the ruins of the streets, buried the dead, and restored the services of the national religion.

Another task subsequently awaited him—the rebuilding of the city. He began boldly; and all that Lisbon now has of beauty is due to the taste and energy of Pombal. He built noble squares. He did more: he built the more important fabric of public sewers in the new streets, and he laid out a public garden for the popular recreation. But he found, as Wren found, even in England, the infinite difficulty of opposing private interest, even in public objects; and Lisbon lost the opportunity of being the most picturesque and stately of European cities. One project, which would have been at once of the highest beauty and of the highest benefit—a terrace along the shore of the Tagus from Santa Apollonia to Belem, a distance of nearly six miles, which would have formed the finest promenade in the world—he was either forced to give up or to delay, until its execution was hopeless. It was never even begun.

The vigour of Pombal's administration raised bitter enemies to him among those who had lived on the abuses of government, or the plunder of the people. The Jesuits hated alike the king and his minister. They even declared the earthquake to have 104been a divine judgment for the sins of the administration. But they were rash enough, in the intemperance of their zeal, to threaten a repetition of the earthquake at the same time next year. When the destined day came, Pombal planted strong guards at the city gates, to prevent the panic of the people in rushing into the country. The earthquake did not fulfil the promise; and the people first laughed at themselves, and then at the Jesuits. The laugh had important results in time.

There are few things more remarkable in diplomatic history, than the long connexion of Portugal with England. It arose naturally from the commerce of the two nations—Portugal, already the most adventurous of nations, and England, growing in commercial enterprise. The advantages were mutual. In the year 1367, we have a Portuguese treaty stipulating for protection to the Portuguese traders in England. In 1382, a royal order of Richard II. permits the Portuguese ambassador to bring his baggage into England free of duty—perhaps one of the earliest instances of a custom which marked the progress of civilization, and which has since been generally adopted throughout all civilized nations. A decree of Henry IV., in 1405, exonerates the Portuguese resident in England, and their ships, from being made responsible for the debts contracted by their ambassadors. In 1656, the important privilege was conceded to the English in Portugal, of being exempted from the native jurisdiction, and being tried by a judge appointed by England. This, in our days, might be an inadmissible privilege; but two centuries ago, in the disturbed condition of the Portuguese laws and general society, it might have been necessary for the simple protection of the strangers.

The theories of domestic manufactures and free trade have lately occupied so large a portion of public interest, that it is curious to see in what light they were regarded by a statesman so far in advance of his age as Pombal. The minister's theory is in striking contradiction to his practice. He evidently approved of monopoly and prohibitions, but he exercised neither the one nor the other—nature and necessity were too strong against him. We are, however, to recollect, that the language of complaint was popular in Portugal, as it always will be in a poor country, and that the minister who would be popular must adopt the language of complaint. In an eloquent and almost impassioned memoir by Pombal, he mourns over the poverty of his country, and hastily imputes it to the predominance of English commerce. He tells us that, in the middle of the eighteenth century, Portugal scarcely produced any thing towards her own support. Two thirds of her physical necessities were supplied from England. He complains that England had become mistress of the entire commerce of Portugal, and in fact that the Portuguese trade was only an English trade; that the English were the furnishers and retailers of all the necessaries of life throughout the country, and that the Portuguese had nothing to do but look on; that Cromwell, by the treaty which allowed the supply of Portugal with English cloths to the amount of two million sterling, had utterly impoverished the country; and in short, that the weakness and incapacity of Portugal, as an European state, were wholly owing, to her being destitute of trade, and that the destitution was wholly owing to her being overwhelmed by English commodities.

We are not about to enter into detail upon this subject, but it is to be remembered, that Portugal obtained the cloth, even if she paid for it, cheaper from England than she could have done from any other country in Europe; that she had no means of making the cloth for herself, and that, after all, man must be clothed. Portugal, without flocks or fire, without coals or capital, could never have manufactured cloth enough to cover the tenth part of her population, at ten times the expense. This has occurred in later days, and in more opulent countries. We remember, in the reign of the Emperor Paul, when he was frantic enough to declare war against England, a pair of broadcloth pantaloons costing seven guineas in St Peterburg. This would have been severe work for the purse of a Portuguese peasant a hundred years ago. The plain fact of domestic manufactures being this, that no folly can be 105more foolish than to attempt to form them where the means and the country do not give them a natural superiority. For example, coals and iron are essential to the product of all works in metal. France has neither. How can she, therefore, contest the superiority of our hardware? She contests it simply by doing without it, and by putting up with the most intolerable cutlery that the world has ever seen. If, where manufactures are already established, however ineffectual, it may become a question with the government whether some privations must not be submitted to by the people in general, rather than precipitate those unlucky manufactures into ruin; there can be no question whatever on the subject where manufactures have not been hitherto established. Let the people go to the best market, let no attempt be made to force nature, and let no money be wasted on the worst article got by the worst means. One thing, however, is quite clear with respect to Portugal, that, by the English alliance, she has gained what is worth all the manufactures of Europe—independence. When, in 1640, she threw off the Spanish usurpation, and placed the Braganza family on the national throne, she threw herself on the protection of England; and that protection never has failed her to this hour. In the Spanish invasion of Portugal in 1762, England sent her ten thousand men, and the first officer of his day, Count La Lippe, who, notwithstanding his German name, was an Englishman born, and had commenced his service in the Guards. The Spaniards were beaten in all directions, and Portugal was included in the treaty of Fontainbleau in 1763. The deliverance of Portugal in the Peninsular war is too recent to be forgotten, and too memorable to be spoken of here as it deserves. And to understand the full value of this assistance, we are to recollect, that Portugal is one of the smallest kingdoms of Europe, and at the same time the most exposed; that its whole land frontier is open to Spain, and its whole sea frontier is open to France; that its chief produce is wine and oranges, and that England is incomparably its best customer for both.

Pombal, in his memoir, imputes a portion of the poverty of Portugal to her possession of the gold mines of Brazil. This is one of the paradoxes of the last century; but nations are only aggregates of men, and what makes an individual rich, cannot make a nation poor. The true secret is this—that while the possession of the gold mines induced an indolent government to rely upon them for the expenses of the state, that reliance led them to abandon sources of profit in the agriculture and commerce of the country, which were of ten times the value. This was equally the case in Spain. The first influx from the mines of Peru, enabled the government to disregard the revenues arising from the industry of the people. In consequence of the want of encouragement from the government, the agriculture and commerce of Spain sank rapidly into the lowest condition, whilst the government indolently lived on the produce of the mines. But the more gold and silver exist in circulation, the less becomes their value. Within half a century, the imports from the Spanish and Portuguese mines, had reduced the value of the precious metals by one half; and those imports thus became inadequate to the ordinary expenses of government. Greater efforts were then made to obtain them from the mines. Still, as the more that was obtained the less was the general value, the operation became more profitless still; and at length both Spain and Portugal were reduced to borrow money, which they had no means to pay—in other words, were bankrupt. And this is the true solution of the problem—why have the gold and silver mines of the Peninsula left them the poorest nations of Europe? Yet this was contrary to the operation of new wealth. The discovery of the mines of the New World appears to have been a part of that providential plan, by which a general impulse was communicated to Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Europe was preparing for a new vigour of religion, politics, commerce, and civilization. Nothing stimulates national effort of every kind with so much power and rapidity, as a new general accession of wealth, or, as the political economist would pronounce it, a rise of 106wages, whether industrial or intellectual; and this rise was effected by the new influx of the mines. If Peru and Mexico had belonged to England, she would have converted their treasures into new canals and high-roads, new harbours, new encouragements to agriculture, new excitements to public education, new enterprises of commerce, or the colonization of new countries in the productive regions of the globe; and thus she would at once have increased her natural opulence, and saved herself from suffering under the depreciation of the precious metals, or more partially, by her active employment of them, have almost wholly prevented that depreciation. But the Peninsula, relying wholly on its imported wealth, and neglecting its infinitely more important national riches, was exactly in the condition of an individual, who spends the principal of his property, which is continually sinking until it is extinguished altogether.

Another source of Peninsular poverty existed in its religion. The perpetual holidays of Popery made even the working portion of the people habitually idle. Where labour is prohibited for nearly a fourth of the year by the intervention of holidays, and thus idleness is turned into a sacred merit, the nation must prepare for beggary. But Popery goes further still. The establishment of huge communities of sanctified idlers, monks and nuns by the ten thousand, in every province and almost in every town, gave a sacred sanction to idleness—gave a means of escaping work to all who preferred the lounging and useless life of the convent to regular labour, and even provided the means of living to multitudes of vagabonds, who were content to eat their bread, and drink their soup, daily at the convent gates, rather than to make any honest decent effort to maintain themselves. Every country must be poor in which a large portion of the public property goes to the unproductive classes. The soldiery, the monks, the state annuitants, the crowds of domestics, dependent on the families of the grandees, all are necessarily unproductive. The money which they receive is simply consumed. It makes no return. Thus poverty became universal; and nothing but the singular fertility of the peopled districts of Spain and Portugal, and the fortune of having a climate which requires but few of the comforts essential in a severer temperature, could have saved them both from being the most pauperized of all nations, or even from perishing altogether, and leaving the land a desert behind them. It strangely illustrates these positions, that, in 1754, the Portuguese treasury was so utterly emptied, that the monarch was compelled to borrow 400,000 crusadoes (L.40,000) from a private company, for the common expenses of his court.

Wholly and justly disclaiming the imputation which would pronounce Portugal a dependent on England, it is impossible to turn a page of her history without seeing the measureless importance of her English connexion. Every genuine source of her power and opulence has either originated with, or been sustained by, her great ally. Among the first of these has been the wine trade. In the year 1756—the year following that tremendous calamity which had sunk Lisbon into ruins—the wine-growers in the three provinces of Beira, Minho, and Tras-os-Montes, represented that they were on the verge of ruin. The adulteration of the Portuguese wines by the low traders had destroyed their character in Europe, and the object of the representation was to reinstate that character. Pombal immediately took up their cause; and, in the course of the same year, was formed the celebrated Oporto Wine Company, with a capital of £120,000. The declared principles of the establishment were, to preserve the quality of the wines, to secure the growers by fixing a regular price, and to protect them from the combinations of dealers. The company had the privilege of purchasing all the wines grown within a particular district at a fixed price, for a certain period after the vintage. When that period had expired, the growers were at liberty to sell the wines which remained unpurchased in whatever market they pleased. Monopolies, in the advanced and prosperous career of commercial countries, generally sink into abuse; but they are, in most instances, absolutely 107necessary to the infant growth of national traffic. All the commerce of Europe has commenced by companies. In the early state of European trade, individuals were too poor for those large enterprises which require a large outlay, and whose prospects, however promising, are distant. What one cannot do, must be done by a combination of many, if it is to be done at all. Though when individual capital, by the very action of that monopoly, becomes powerful enough for those enterprises, then the time is at hand when the combination may be dissolved with impunity. The Oporto Wine Company had no sooner come into existence, than its benefits were felt in every branch of Portuguese revenue. It restored and extended the cultivation of the vine, which is the staple of Portugal. It has been abolished in the revolutionary changes of late years. But the question, whether the country is yet fit to bear the abolition, is settled by the fact, that the wine-growers are complaining of ruin, and that the necessity of the case is now urging the formation of the company once more.

The decision of Pombal's character was never more strongly shown than on this occasion. The traders into whose hands the Portuguese wines had fallen, and who had enjoyed an illegal monopoly for so many years, raised tumults, and serious insurrection was threatened. At Oporto, the mob plundered the director's house, and seized on the chief magistrate. The military were attacked, and the government was endangered. The minister instantly ordered fresh troops to Oporto; arrests took place; seventeen persons were executed; five-and-twenty sent to the galleys; eighty-six banished, and others subjected to various periods of imprisonment. The riots were extinguished. In a striking memoir, written by Pombal after his retirement from office, he gives a brief statement of the origin of this company—a topic at all times interesting to the English public, and which is about to derive a new interest from its practical revival in Portugal. We quote a fragment.

"The unceasing and urgent works which the calamitous earthquake of November 1st, 1755, had rendered indispensable, were still vigorously pursued, when, in the following year, one Mestre Frei Joao de Mansilla presented himself at the Giunta at Belem, on the part of the principal husbandmen of Upper Douro, and of the respectable inhabitants of Oporto, in a state of utter consternation.

"In the popular outcry of the time, the English were represented as making themselves the sole managers of every thing. The fact being, that, as they were the only men who had any money, they were almost the sole purchasers in the Portuguese markets. But the English here complained of were the low traffickers, who, in conjunction with the Lisbon and Oporto vintners, bought and managed the wines at their discretion. It was represented to the king, that, by those means, the price of wine had been reduced to 7200 rios a pipe, or less, until the expense of cultivation was more than the value of the produce; that those purchasers required one or two years' credit; that the price did not pay for the hoeing of the land, which was consequently deserted; that all the principal families of one district had been reduced to poverty, so much so as to be obliged to sell their knives and forks; that the poor people had not a drop of oil for their salad, so that they were obliged, even in Lent, to season their vegetables with the fat of hogs." The memoir mentions even gross vice as a consequence of their extreme poverty.

We quote this passage to show to what extremities a people may be reduced by individual mismanagement, and what important changes may be produced by the activity of an intelligent directing power. The king's letters-patent of 1756, establishing the company, provided at once for the purity of the wine, its extended sale in England, and the solvency of the wine provinces. It is only one among a thousand instances of the hazards in which Popery involves all regular government, to find the Jesuits inflaming the populace against this most salutary and successful act of the king. At confession, they prompted the people to believe "that the wines of the company were not fit for the 108celebration of mass." (For the priests drink wine in the communion, though the people receive only the bread.) To give practical example to their precept, they dispersed narratives of a great popular insurrection which had occurred in 1661; and both incentives resulted in the riots in Oporto, which it required all the vigour of Pombal to put down.

But the country and Europe was now to acknowledge the services of the great minister on a still higher scale. The extinction of the Jesuits was the work of his bold and sagacious mind. The history of this event is among the most memorable features of a century finishing with the fall of the French monarchy.

The passion of Rome for territory has been always conspicuous, and always unsuccessful. Perpetually disturbing the Italian princes in the projects of usurpation, it has scarcely ever advanced beyond the original bounds fixed for it by Charlemagne. Its spirit of intrigue, transfused into its most powerful order the Jesuits, was employed for the similar purpose of acquiring territorial dominion. But Europe was already divided among powerful nations. Those nations were governed by jealous authorities, powerful kings for their leaders, and powerful armies for their defence. All was full; there was no room for the contention of a tribe of ecclesiastics, although the most daring, subtle, and unscrupulous of the countless slaves and soldiers of Rome. The world of America was open. There a mighty power might grow up unseen by the eye of Europe. A population of unlimited multitudes might find space in the vast plains; commerce in the endless rivers; defence in the chains of mountains; and wealth in the rocks and sands of a region teeming with the precious metals. The enterprise was commenced under the pretext of converting the Indians of Paraguay. Within a few years the Jesuits formed an independent republic, numbering thirty-one towns, with a population of a hundred thousand souls. To render their power complete, they prohibited all communication between the natives and the Spaniards and Portuguese, forbidding them to learn the language of either country, and implanting in the mind of the Indians an implacable hatred of both Spain and Portugal. At length both courts became alarmed, and orders were sent out to extinguish the usurpation. Negotiations were in the mean time opened between Spain and Portugal relative to an exchange of territory, and troops were ordered to effect the exchange. Measures of this rank were unexpected by the Jesuits. They had reckoned upon the proverbial tardiness of the Peninsular councils; but they were determined not to relinquish their prize without a struggle. They accordingly armed the natives, and prepared for a civil war.

The Indians, unwarlike as they have always been, now headed by their Jesuit captains, outmanoeuvred the invaders. The expedition failed; and the baffled invasion ended in a disgraceful treaty. The expedition was renewed in the next year, 1755, and again baffled. The Portuguese government of the Brazils now made renewed efforts, and in 1756 obtained some advantages; but they were still as far as ever from final success, and the war, fruitless as it was, had begun to drain heavily the finances of the mother country. It had already cost the treasury of Lisbon a sum equal to three millions sterling. But the minister at the head of the Portuguese government was of a different character from the race who had, for the last hundred years, wielded the ministerial sceptres of Spain and Portugal. His clear and daring spirit at once saw where the evil lay, and defied the difficulties that lay between him and its cure. He determined to extinguish the order of the Jesuits at a blow. The boldness of this determination can be estimated only by a knowledge of the time. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits were the ecclesiastical masters of Europe. They were the confessors of the chief monarchs of the Continent; the heads of the chief seminaries for national education; the principal professors in all the universities;—and this influence, vast as it was by its extent and variety, was rendered more powerful by the strict discipline, the unhesitating obedience, and the systematic 109activity of their order. All the Jesuits existing acknowledged one head, the general of their order, whose constant residence was at Rome. But their influence, powerful as it was by their open operation on society, derived perhaps a superior power from its secret exertions. Its name was legion—its numbers amounted to thousands—it took every shape of society, from the highest to the lowest. It was the noble and the peasant—the man of learning and the man of trade—the lawyer and the monk—the soldier and the sailor—nay, it was said, that such was the extraordinary pliancy of its principle of disguise, the Jesuit was suffered to assume the tenets of Protestantism, and even to act as a Protestant pastor, for the purpose of more complete deception. The good of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; the power of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system of artifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of human opinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican, was the triumph for which those armies of subtle enthusiasm and fraudulent sanctity were prepared to live and die.

The first act of Pombal was to remove the king's confessor, the Jesuit Moreira. The education of the younger branches of the royal family was in the hands of Jesuits. Pombal procured a royal order that no Jesuit should approach the court, without obtaining the express permission of the king. He lost no time in repeating the assault. Within a month, on the 8th of October 1767, he sent instructions to the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, to demand a private audience, and lay before the pope the misdemeanours of the order.

Those instructions charged the Jesuits with the most atrocious personal profligacy, with a design to master all public power, to gather opulence dangerous to the state, and actually to plot against the authority of the crowns of Europe. He announced, that the king of Portugal had commanded all the Jesuit confessors of the prince and princesses to withdraw to their own convents; and this important manifesto closed by soliciting the interposition of the papal see to prevent the ruin, by purifying an order which had given scandal to Christianity, by offences against the public and private peace of society, equally unexampled, habitual, and abominable. In 1758, the representation to the pope was renewed, with additional proofs that the order had determined to usurp every function, and thwart every act of the civil government; that the confessors of the royal family, though dismissed, continued to conspire; that they resisted the formation of royal institutions for the renewal of the national commerce; and that they excited the people to dangerous tumults, in defiance of the royal authority.

Their intrigues comprehended every object by which influence was to be obtained, or money was to be made. The "Great Wine Company," on which the chief commerce of Portugal, and almost the existence of its northern provinces depended, was a peculiar object of their hostility, for reasons which we can scarcely apprehend, except they were general jealousy of all lay power, and hostility to all the works of Pombal. They assailed it from their pulpits; and one of their popular preachers made himself conspicuous by impiously exclaiming, "that whoever joined that company, would have no part in the company of Jesus Christ."

The intrigues of this dangerous and powerful society had long before been represented to the popes, and had drawn down upon them those remonstrances by which the habitual dexterity of Rome at once saves appearances, and suffers the continuance of the delinquency. The Jesuits were too useful to be restrained; yet their crimes were too palpable to be passed over. In consequence, the complaints of the monarchs of Spain and Portugal were answered by bulls issued from time to time, equally formal and ineffective. Yet even from these documents may be ascertained the singularly gross, worldly, and illegitimate pursuits of an order, professing itself to be supremely religious, and the prime sustainer of the "faith of the gospel." The bull of Benedict the XIV., issued in 1741, prohibited from "trade and commerce, all worldly dominion, and the purchase and sale 110of converted Indians." The bull extended the prohibition generally to the monkish orders, to avoid branding the Jesuits especially. But a bull of more direct reprehension was published at the close of the year, expressly against the Jesuits in their missions in the east and west. The language of this document amounts to a catalogue of the most atrocious offences against society, humanity, and morals. By this bull, "all men, and especially Jesuits," are prohibited, under penalty of excommunication, from "making slaves of the Indians; from selling and bartering them; from separating them from their wives and children; from robbing them of their property; from transporting them from their native soil," &c.

Nothing but the strongest necessity, and the most ample evidence, would ever have drawn this condemnation from Rome, whether sincere or insincere. But the urgencies of the case became more evident from day to day. In 1758, the condemnation was followed by the practical measure of appointing Cardinal Saldanha visitor and reformer of the Jesuits in Portugal, and the Portuguese settlements in the east and west.

Within two months of this appointment the following decree was issued:—"For just reasons known to us, and which concern especially the service of God and the public welfare, we suspend from the power of confessing and preaching, in the whole extent of our patriarchate, the fathers of the Society of Jesus, from this moment, and until further notice." Saldanha had been just raised to the patriarchate.

We have given some observations on this subject, from its peculiar importance to the British empire at this moment. The order of the Jesuits, extinguished in the middle of the last century by the unanimous demand of Europe, charged with every crime which could make a great association obnoxious to mankind, and exhibiting the most atrocious violations of the common rules of human morality, has, within this last quarter of a century, been revived by the papacy, with the express declaration, that its revival is for the exclusive purpose of giving new effect to the doctrines, the discipline, and the power of Rome. The law which forbids the admission of Jesuits into England, has shared the fate of all laws feebly administered; and Jesuits are active by hundreds or by thousands in every portion of the empire. They have restored the whole original system, sustained by all their habitual passion for power, and urging their way, with all their ancient subtlety, through all ranks of Protestantism.

The courage and intelligence of Pombal placed him in the foremost rank of Europe, when the demand was the boldest and most essential service which a great minister could offer to his country; he broke the power of Jesuitism. But an order so numerous—for even within the life of its half-frenzied founder it amounted to 19,000—so vindictive, and flung from so lofty a rank of influence, could not perish without some desperate attempts to revenge its ruin. The life of Pombal was so constantly in danger, that the king actually assigned him a body guard. But the king himself was exposed to one of the most remarkable plots of regicide on record—the memorable Aveiro and Tavora conspiracy.

On the night of the 3d of September 1758, as the king was returning to the palace at night in a cabriolet, attended only by his valet, two men on horseback, and armed with blunderbusses, rode up to the carriage, and leveled their weapons at the monarch. One of them missed fire, the other failed of its effect. The royal postilion, in alarm, rushed forward, when two men, similarly waiting in the road, galloped after the carriage, and both fired their blunderbusses into it behind. The cabriolet was riddled with slugs, and the king was wounded in several places. By an extraordinary presence of mind, Don Joseph, instead of ordering the postilion to gallop onward, directed him instantly to turn back, and, to avoid alarming the palace, carry him direct to the house of the court surgeon. By this fortunate order, he escaped the other groups of the conspirators, who were stationed further on the road, and under whose repeated discharges he would probably have fallen. 111 The public alarm and indignation on the knowledge of this desperate atrocity were unbounded. There seemed to be but one man in the kingdom who preserved his composure, and that one was Pombal. Exhibiting scarcely even the natural perturbation at an event which had threatened almost a national convulsion, he suffered the whole to become a matter of doubt, and allowed the king's retirement from the public eye to be considered as merely the effect of accident. The public despatch of Mr Hay, the British envoy at Lisbon, alludes to it, chiefly as assigning a reason for the delay of a court mourning—the order for this etiquette, on the death of the Spanish queen, not having been put in execution. The envoy mentions that it had been impeded by the king's illness,—"it being the custom of the court to put on gala when any of the royal family are blooded. When I went to court to enquire after his majesty's health, I was there informed that the king, on Sunday night the 3d instant, passing through a gallery to go to the queen's apartment, had the misfortune to fall and bruise his right arm; he had been blooded eight different times; and, as his majesty is a fat bulky man, to prevent any humours fixing there, his physicians have advised that he should not use his arm, but abstain from business for some time. In consequence, the queen was declared regent during Don Joseph's illness."

This was the public version of the event. But appended to the despatch was a postscript, in cipher, stating the reality of the transaction. Pombal's sagacity, and his self control, perhaps a still rarer quality among the possessors of power, were exhibited in the strongest light on this occasion. For three months not a single step appeared to be taken to punish, or even to detect the assassins. The subject was allowed to die away; when, on the 9th of December, all Portugal was startled by a royal decree, declaring the crime, and offering rewards for the seizure of the assassins. Some days afterwards Lisbon heard, with astonishment, an order for the arrest of the Duke of Aveira, one of the first nobles, and master of the royal household; the arrest of the whole family of the Marquis of Tavora, himself, his two sons, his four brothers, and his two sons-in-law. Other nobles were also seized; and the Jesuits were forbidden to be seen out of their houses.

The three months of Pombal's apparent inaction had been incessantly employed in researches into the plot. Extreme caution was evidently necessary, where the criminals were among the highest officials and nobles, seconded by the restless and formidable machinations of the Jesuits. When his proofs were complete, he crushed the conspirators at a single grasp. His singular inactivity had disarmed them; and nothing but the most consummate composure could have prevented their flying from justice. On the 12th of January 1759, they were found guilty; and on the 13th they were put to death, to the number of nine, with the Marchioness of Tavora, in the square of Belem. The scaffold and the bodies were burned, and the ashes thrown into the sea.

Those were melancholy acts; the works of melancholy times. But as no human crime can be so fatal to the security of a state as regicide, no imputation can fall on the memory of a great minister, compelled to exercise justice in its severity, for the protection of all orders of the kingdom. In our more enlightened period, we must rejoice that those dreadful displays of judicial power have passed away; and that laws are capable of being administered without the tortures, or the waste of life, which agonize the feelings of society. Yet, while blood for blood continued to be the code; while the sole prevention of crime was sought for in the security of judgment; and while even the zeal of justice against guilt was measured by the terrible intensity of the punishment—we must charge the horror of such sweeping executions to the ignorance of the age, much more than to the vengeance of power.

This tragedy was long the subject of European memory; and all the extravagance of popular credulity was let loose ill discovering the causes of the conspiracy. It was said, in the despatches of the English minister, that the Marquis of Tavora, who had been Portuguese minister in the 112East, was irritated by the royal attentions to his son's wife. Ambition was the supposed ground of the Duke of Aveira's perfidy. The old Marchioness of Tavora, who had been once the handsomest woman at court, and was singularly vein and haughty, was presumed to have received some personal offence, by the rejection of the family claim to a dukedom. All is wrapped in the obscurity natural to transactions in which individuals of rank are involved in the highest order of crime. It was the natural policy of the minister to avoid extending the charges by explaining the origin of the crime. The connexions of the traitors were still many and powerful; and further disclosures might have produced only further attempts at the assassination of the minister or the king.

It was now determined to act with vigour against the Jesuits, who were distinctly charged with assisting, if not originating, the treason. A succession of decrees were issued, depriving them of their privileges and possessions; and finally, on the 5th of October 1759, the cardinal patriarch Saldanha issued the famous mandate, by which the whole society was expelled from the Portuguese dominions. Those in the country were transported to Civita Vecchia; those in the colonies were also conveyed to the Papal territory; and thus, by the intrepidity, wisdom, and civil courage of one man, the realm was relieved from the presence of the most powerful and most dangerous body which had ever disturbed the peace of society.

Portugal having thus the honour of taking the lead, Rome herself at length followed; and, on the accession of the celebrated Ganganelli, Clement XIV., a resolution was adopted to suppress the Jesuits in every part of the world. On the 21st of July 1773, the memorable bull "Dominus ac Redemptor," was published, and the order was at an end. The announcement was received in Lisbon with natural rejoicing. Te Deum was sung, and the popular triumph was unbounded and universal.

We now hasten to the close of this distinguished minister's career. His frame, though naturally vigorous, began to feel the effects of his incessant labour, and an apoplectic tendency threatened to shorten a life so essential to the progress of Portugal; for that whole life was one of temperate and progressive reform. His first application was to the finances; he found the Portuguese exchequer on the verge of bankruptcy. A third of the taxes was embezzled in the collection. In 1761, his new system was adopted, by which the finances were restored; and every week a balance-sheet of the whole national expenditure was presented to the king. His next reform was the royal household, where all unnecessary expenses—and they were numerous—were abolished. Another curious reform will be longer remembered in Portugal. The nation had hitherto used only the knife at dinner! Pombal introduced the fork. He brought this novel addition to the table with him from England in 1745!

The nobility were remarkably ignorant. Pombal formed the "College of Nobles" for their express education. There they were taught every thing suitable to their rank. The only prohibition being, "that they should not converse in Latin," the old pedantic custom of the monks. The nobles were directed to converse in English, French, Italian, or their native tongue; Pombal declaring, that the custom of speaking Latin was only "to teach them to barbarize."

Another custom, though of a more private order, attracted the notice of this rational and almost universal improver. It had been adopted as a habit by the widows of the nobility, to spend the first years of their widowhood in the most miserable seclusion; they shut up their windows, retired to some gloomy chamber, slept on the floor, and, suffering all kinds of voluntary and absurd mortifications, forbade the approach of the world. As the custom was attended with danger to health, and often with death, besides its general melancholy influence on society, the minister publicly "enacted," that every part of it should be abolished; and, moreover, that the widows should always remove to another house; or, where this was not practicable, that they "should not close the shutters, nor 'mourn' for more than a week, nor remain at home for more than a month, nor 113sleep on the ground." Doubtless, tens of thousands thanked him, and thank him still, for this war against a popular, but most vexatious, absurdity.

His next reform was the army. After the peace of 1763, he fixed it at 30,000 men, whom he equipped effectually, and brought into practical discipline.

A succession of laws, made for the promotion of European and colonial trade, next opened the resources of Portugal to an extent unknown before. Pombal next abolished the "Index Expurgitorius"—an extraordinary achievement, not merely beyond his age, but against the whole superstitious spirit of his age. He was not content with abolishing the restraint; he attempted to restore the PRESS in Portugal. Hitherto nearly all Portuguese books had been printed in foreign counties. He established a "Royal Press," and gave its superintendence to Pagliarini, a Roman printer, who had been expatriated for printing works against the Jesuits. Such, in value and extent, were the acts which Portugal owed to this indefatigable and powerful mind, that when, in 1766, he suffered a paralytic stroke, the king and the people were alike thrown into consternation.

At length Don Joseph, the king, and faithful friend of Pombal, died, after a reign of twenty-seven years of honour and usefulness. Pombal requested to resign, and the Donna Maria accepted the resignation, and conferred various marks of honour upon him. He now retired to his country-seat, where Wraxall saw him in 1772, and thus describes his appearance. "At this time he had attained his seventy-third year, but age seemed to have diminished neither the freshness nor the activity of his faculties. In his person he was very tall and slender, his face long, pale, and meagre, but full of intelligence."

But Pombal had been too magnanimous for the court and nobles; and the loss of his power as minister produced a succession of intrigues against him, by the relatives of the Tavora family, and doubtless also by the ecclesiastical influence, which has always been at once so powerful and so prejudicial in Portugal. He was insulted by a trial, at which, however, the only sentence inflicted was an order to retire twenty leagues from the court. The Queen was, at that time, probably suffering under the first access of that derangement, which, in a few years after, utterly incapacitated her, and condemned the remainder of her life to melancholy and total solitude. But the last praise is not given to the great minister, while his personal disinterestedness is forgotten. One of the final acts of his life was to present to the throne a statement of his public income, when it appeared that, during the twenty-seven years of his administration, he had received no public emolument but his salary as secretary of state, and about L.100 a-year for another office. But he was rich; for, as his two brothers remained unmarried, their incomes were joined with his own. He lived, held in high respect and estimation by the European courts, to the great age of eighty-three, dying on the 5th of May without pain. A long inscription, yet in which the panegyric did not exceed the justice, was placed on his tomb. Yet a single sentence might have established his claim to the perpetual gratitude of his country and mankind—

"Here lies the man who banished the

Jesuits from Portugal."

Mr Smith's volume is intelligently written, and does much credit to his research and skill. 114

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART XII.

Have I not in my time heard lions roar?

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

Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?

Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,

And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?

Have I not in the pitched battle heard

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

SHAKSPEARE.

Elnathan was a man of many cares, and every kind of wisdom, but one—the wisdom of knowing when he had wealth enough. He evidently loved accumulation; and the result was, that every hour of his existence was one of terror. Half the brokers and chief traders in France were already in prison; and yet he carried on the perilous game of commerce. He was known to be immensely opulent; and he must have regarded the day which passed over his head, without seeing his strong boxes put under the government seal, and himself thrown into some oubliette, as a sort of miracle. But he was now assailed by a new alarm. War with England began to be rumoured among the bearded brethren of the synagogue; and Elnathan had ships on every sea, from Peru to Japan. Like Shakspeare's princely merchant—

"His mind was tossing on the ocean,

There where his argosies with portly sail,

Like signiors, and rich burghers of the flood.

Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,

Did overpower the petty traffickers,

As they flew by them with their woven wings."

The first shot fired would inevitably pour out the whole naval force of England, and his argosies would put their helms about, and steer for Portsmouth, Plymouth, and every port but a French one. If this formidable intelligence had awakened the haughtiness of the French government to a sense of public peril, what effect must it not have in the counting-house of a man whose existence was trade? While I was on my pillow, luxuriating in dreams of French fêtes, Paul and Virginia carried off to the clouds, and Parisian belles dancing cotillons in the bowers and pavilions of a Mahometan paradise, Elnathan spent the night at his desk, surrounded by his bustling generation of clerks, writing to correspondents at every point of the compass, and preparing insurances with the great London establishments; which I was to carry with me, though unacquainted with the transaction on which so many millions of francs hung trembling.

His morning face showed me, that whatever had been his occupation before I met him at the breakfast-table, it had been a most uneasy one. His powerful and rather handsome physiognomy had shrunk to half the size; his lips were livid, and his hand shook to a degree which made me ask, whether the news from Robespierre was unfavourable. But his assurance that all still went on well in that delicate quarter, restored my tranquility, which was beginning to give way; and my only stipulation now was, that I should have an hour or two to spend at Vincennes before I took my final departure. The Jew was all astonishment; his long visage elongated at the very sound; he shook his locks, lifted up his large hands, and fixed his wide eyes on me with a look of mingled alarm and wonder, which would have been ludicrous if it had not been perfectly sincere.

"In the name of common sense, do you remember in what a country, and in what times, we live? Oh, those Englishmen! always thinking that they are in England. My young friend, you are clearly not fit for France, and the sooner you get out of it the better."

I still remonstrated. "Do you forget yesterday?" he exclaimed. "Can you forget the man before whom we both stood? A moment's hesitation 115on your part to set out, would breed suspicion in that most suspicious brain of all mankind. Life is here as uncertain as in a field of battle. Begone the instant your passports arrive, and never behind you.—For my part, I constantly feel as if my head were in the lion's jaws. Rejoice in your escape."

But I was still unconvinced, and explained "that my only motive was, to relieve my friends in the fortress from the alarm which they had evidently felt for my fate, and to relieve myself from the charge of ingratitude, which would inevitably attach to me if I left Paris without seeing them."

Never was man more perplexed with a stubborn subject. He represented to me the imminent hazard of straying a hair's-breadth to the right or left of the orders of Robespierre! "I was actually under surveillance, and he was responsible for me. To leave his roof; even for five minutes, until I left it for my journey, might forfeit the lives of both before evening."

I still remonstrated; and pronounced the opinion, perhaps too flattering a one, of the dictator, that "he could not condescend to forbid a mere matter of civility, which still left me entirely at his service." The Jew at last, in despair, rushed from the room, leaving me to the unpleasing consciousness that I had distressed an honest and even a friendly man.

Two hours thus elapsed, when a chaise de poste drew up at the door, with an officer of the police in front, and from it came Varnhorst and the doctor, both probably expecting a summons to the scaffold; but the Prussian bearing his lot with the composure of a man accustomed to face death, and the doctor evidently in measureless consternation, colourless and convulsed with fear. His rapture was equally unbounded when Elnathan, ushering them both into the apartment where I sat—

Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter

thought"—

explained, that finding me determined on my point, he had adopted the old proverb—of bringing Mahomet to the mountain, if he could not bring the mountain to Mahomet; had procured an order for their attendance in Paris, through his influence with the chief of the police, and now hoped to have the honour of their company at dinner. This was, certainly, a desirable exchange for the Place de Grève; and we sat down to a sumptuous table, where we enjoyed ourselves with the zest which danger escaped gives to luxurious security.

All went on well. The doctor was surprised to find in the frowning banker, who had repulsed him so sternly from his desk, the hospitable entertainer; and Varhorst's honest and manly friendship was gratified by the approach of my release from a scene of perpetual danger.

I had some remembrances to give to my friends in Prussia; and at length, sending away the doctor to display his connoisseurship on Elnathan's costly collection of pictures, Varnhorst was left to my questioning. My first question naturally was, "What had involved him in the ill-luck of the Austrians."

"The soldier's temptation every where," was the answer; "having nothing to do at home, and expecting something to do abroad. When the Prussian army once crossed the Rhine, I should have had no better employment than to mount guard, escort the court dowagers to the balls, and finish the year and my life together, by dying of ennui. In this critical moment, when I was in doubt whether I should turn Tartar, or monk of La Trappe, Clairfait sent to offer me the command of a division. I closed with it at once, went to the king, obtained his leave, put spurs to my horse, and reached the Austrian camp before the courier."

I could not help expressing my envy at a profession in which all the honours of earth lay at the feet of a successful soldier! He smiled, and pointed to the police-officer, who was then sulkily pacing in front of the house.

"You see," said he, "the first specimen of my honours. Yet, from the moment of my arrival within the Austrian lines, I could have predicted our misfortune. Clairfait was, at least, as long-sighted as myself; and nothing could exceed his despondency but his indignation. His noble heart 116was half broken by the narrowness of his resources for defending the country, and the boundless folly by which the war council of Vienna expected to make up for the weakness of their battalions by the absurdity of their plans. 'I write for regiments,' the gallant fellow used to say; 'and they send me regulations! I tell them that we have not troops enough for an advanced guard; and they send me the plan of a pitched battle! I tell then that the French have raised their army in front of me to a hundred thousand strong; and they promise me reinforcements next year.' After all, his chief perplexity arose from their orders—every despatch regularly contradicting the one that came before.

"Something in the style," said I, "of Voltaire's caricature of the Austrian courier in the Turkish war, with three packs strapped on his shoulders, inscribed, 'Orders'—'Counter-orders'—and 'Disorders.'

"Just a case in point. Voltaire would have been exactly the historian for our campaign. What an incomparable tale he would have made of it! Every thing that was done was preposterous. We were actually beaten before we fought; we were ruined at Vienna before a shot was fired at Jemappes. The Netherlands were lost, not by powder and ball, but by pen and ink; and the consequence of our "march to Paris" is, that one half of the army is now scattered from Holland to the Rhine, and the other half is, like myself, within French walls."

"Like a man superior to fortune. I never saw him exhibit higher ability than in his dispositions for our last battle. He has become a magnificent tactician. But Alexander the Great himself could not fight without troops: and such was our exact condition.

"Dumourier, at the head of a hundred thousand men, had turned short from the Prussian retreat, and flung himself upon the Netherlands. How many troops do you think the wisdom of the Aulic Council had provided to protect the provinces? Scarcely more than a third of the number, and those scattered over a frontier of a hundred miles; in a country, too, where every Man spoke French, where every man was half Republican already, where the people had actually begun a revolution, and where we had scarcely a friend, a fortress in repair, or ammunition enough for feu de joie. The French, of course, burst in like an inundation, sweeping every thing before them. I was at dinner with Clairfait and his staff on the day when the intelligence arrived. The map was laid upon the table, and we had a kind of debate on the course which the Frenchman would take. That evening completed my opinion of him as a general. He took the clearest view among all our conjectures, as the event proved, so far as the enemy's movements were concerned; though I still retain my own idea of an original error in the choice of our field of battle. Before the twilight fell, we mounted our horses, and rode to the spot where Clairfait had already made up his mind to meet the French. It was certainly a capital position for defence—a range of heights not too high for guns, surmounted by a central plateau; the very position for a battery and a brigade; but the very worst that could be taken against the new enemy whom we had to oppose."

"Yet, what could an army of French recruits be expected to do against a disciplined force so strongly posted?" was my question.

"My answer to that point," said Varnhorst, "must be a quotation from my old master of tactics. If the purpose of a general is simply to defend himself, let him keep his troops on heights; if his purpose is simply to make an artillery fight, let him keep behind his guns; but if it is his purpose to beat the enemy, he must leave himself able to follow them—and this he can do only on a plain. In the end, after beating the enemy in a dozen attempts to carry our batteries, but without the power of striking a blow in retaliation, we saw them carried all at once, and were totally driven from the field."

"So much for bravery and discipline against bravery and enthusiasm," said I. "Yet the enemy's loss must have been tremendous. Every assault must have torn their columns to pieces." Even this attempt at reconciling him to his ill fortune failed.

"Yes," was the cool reply; "but 117they could afford it, which was more than we could do. Remember the maxim, my young friend, when you shall come to be a general, that the only security for gaining battles is, to have good troops, and a good many of them.—The French recruits fought like recruits, without knowing whether the enemy were before or behind them; but they fought, and when they were beaten they fought again. While we were fixed on our heights, they were formed into column once more, and marched gallantly up to the mouth of our guns. Then, we had but 18,000 men to the Frenchman's 60,000. Such odds are too great. Whether our great king would have fought at all with such odds against him, may be a question; but there can be none, whether he would have fixed himself where he could not manoeuvre. The Frenchman attacked us on flanks and centre, just when and where he pleased; there stood we, mowing down his masses from our fourteen redoubts, and waiting to be attacked again. To do him justice, he fought stoutly; and to do us justice, we fought sturdily. But still we were losing men; the affair looked unpromising from the first half hour; and I pronounced that, if Dumourier had but perseverance enough, he must carry the field."

I made some passing remark on the singular hazard of bringing untried troops against the proverbial discipline of a German army, and the probability that the age of the wild armies of peasantry in Europe would be renewed, by the evidence of its success.

"Right," said Varnhorst. "The thing that struck me most was, the new character of the whole engagement. It was Republicanism in the field; a bold riot, a mob battle. Nor will it be the last of its kind. Our whole line was once attacked by the French demi-brigades, coming to the charge, with a general chorus of the Marseillaise hymn. The effect was magnificent, as we heard it pealing over the field through all the roar of cannon and musketry. The attack was defeated. It was renewed, under a chorus in honour of their general, and 'Vive Dumourier' was chanted by 50,000 voices, as they advanced against our batteries. This charge broke in upon our position, and took five of our fourteen redoubts. Even Clairfait now acknowledged that all was lost; two-thirds of our men were hors de combat, and orders were given for a retreat. My turn now came to act, and I moved forward with my small brigade of cavalry—but I was not more lucky than the rest."

I pressed to hear the particulars, but his mind was still overwhelmed with a sense of military calamity, always the most reluctant topic to a brave and honest soldier; and he simply said—"the whole was a mêlée. Our rear was threatened in force by a column which had stormed the heights under a young brave, whom I had observed, during the day, exposing himself gallantly to all the risks of the field. To stop the progress of the enemy on this point was essential; for the safety of the whole army was compromised. We charged them, checked them, but found the brigade involved in a force of ten times our number; fought our way out again with heavy loss; and after all, a shot, which brought my charger to the ground, left me wounded and bruised in the hands of the French. I was taken up insensible, was carried to the tent of the young commander of the column, whom I found to be a Duc de Chartres, the son of the late Duke of Orleans. His kindness to his prisoner was equal to his gallantry in the field. Few and hurried as our interviews were, while his army remained in its position he gave me the idea of a mind of great promise, and destined for great things, unless the chances of war should stop his career. But, though a Republican soldier, to my surprise he was no Republican. His enquiries into the state of popular opinion in Europe, showed at once his sagacity, and the turn which his thoughts, young as he was, were already taking.—But the diadem is trampled under foot in France for ever; and with cannon-shot in his front every day of his life, and the guillotine in his rear, who can answer for the history of any man for twenty-four hours together?"

My time in Paris had now come to a close. All my enquiries for the fate of Lafontaine had been fruitless; and I dreaded the still more anxious 118enquiries to which I should be subjected on my arrival; but I had at least the intelligence to give, that I had not left him in the fangs of the jailers of St Lazare. I took leave of my bold and open-hearted Prussian friend with a regret, which I had scarcely expected to feel for one with whom I had been thrown into contact simply by the rough chances of campaigning; but I had the gratification of procuring for him, through the mysterious interest of Elnathan, an order for his transmission to Berlin in the first exchange of prisoners. This promise seemed to compensate all the services which he had rendered to me. "I shall see the Rhine again," said he, "which is much more than I ever expected since the day of our misfortune. "I shall see the Rhine again!—and thanks to you for it." He pressed my hand with honest gratitude.

The carriage which was to convey me to Calais was now at the door. Still, one thought as uppermost in his mind; it was, that I should give due credit to the bravery of the Austrian general and his army. "If I have spoken of the engagement at all," said he, "it was merely to put you in possession of the facts. You return to England; you will of course hear the battle which lost the Netherlands discussed in various versions. The opinion of England decides the opinion of Europe. Tell, then, your countrymen, in vindication of Clairfait and his troops, that after holding his ground for nine hours against three times his force, he retreated with the steadiness of a movement on parade, without leaving behind him a single gun, colour, or prisoner. Tell them, too, that he was defeated only through the marvellous negligence of a government which left him to fight battles without brigades, defend fortresses without guns, and protect insurgent provinces with a fugitive army."

My answer was—"You may rely upon my fighting your battles over the London dinner-tables, as perseveringly, if not as much against odds, as you fought it in the field. But the fortune of war is proverbial, and I hope yet to pour out a libation to you as Generalissimo Varnsdorf, the restorer of the Austrian laurels."

"Well, Marston, may you be a true prophet! But read that letter from Guiscard; our long-headed friend not merely crops our German laurels, but threatens to root up the tree." He handed me a letter from the Prussian philosopher: it was a curious catalogue raisonné of the improbabilities of success in the general war of Europe against the Republic; concluding with the words, so characteristic of his solemn and reflective views of man and the affairs of man—

"War is the original propensity of human nature, and civilization is the great promoter of war. The more civilized all nations become, the more they fight. The most civilized continent of the world has spent the fourth of its modern existence in war. Every man of common sense, of course, abhors its waste of life, of treasure, and of time. Still the propensity is so strong, that it continues the most prodigal sacrifice of them all. I think that we are entering on a period, when war, more than ever, will be the business of nations. I should not be surprised if the mania of turning nations into beggars, and the population into the dust of the field, should last for half a century; until the whole existing generation are in their graves, and a new generation shall take their places, astonished at the fondness of their fathers for bankruptcy and bloodshed." After some sharp censures of the unpurposed conduct of the German cabinets, he finished by saying—"If the French continue to fight as they have just fought, Jemappes will be the beginning of a new era. In the history of the world, every great change of human supremacy has been the result of a change in the principles of war; and the nation which has been the first to adopt that change, has led the triumph for its time. France has now found out a new element in war—the force of multitude, the charge of the masses; and she will conquer, until the kings of Europe follow her example, and call their nations to the field. Till then she will be invincible, but then her conquests will vanish; and the world, exhausted by carnage, will be quiet for a while. But the wolfish spirit of human nature will again hunger for prey; some new system of havoc will be discovered by some great genius, 119who ought to be cursed to the lowest depths of human memory; but who will be exalted to the most rapturous heights of human praise. Then again, when one half of the earth is turned into a field of battle, and the other into a cemetery, mankind will cry out for peace; and again, when refreshed, will rush into still more ruinous war:—thus all things run in a circle. But France has found out the secret for this age, and—vae victis!—the pestilence will be tame to the triumph of her frenzy, her rapine, and her revenge."

"Exactly what I should have expected from Guiscard," was my remark; "he is always making bold attempts to tear up the surface of the time, and look into what is growing below."

"Well, well," replied my honest fellow soldier, "I never perplex my brain with those things. I dare say your philosophers may be right; at least once in a hundred years. But take my word for it, that musket and bayonet will be useful matters still; and that discipline and my old master Frederick, will be as good as Dumourier and desperation, when we shall have brigade for brigade."

The postillions cracked their whips, the little Norman horses tore their way over the rough pavement; the sovereign people scattered off on every side, to save their lives and limbs; and the plan of St Denis, rich with golden corn, and tracked by lines of stately trees, opened far and wide before me. From the first ascent I gave a parting glance at Paris—it was mingled of rejoicing and regret. What hours of interest, of novelty, and of terror, had I not passed within the circuit of those walls! Yet, how the eye cheats reality!—that city of imprisonment and frantic liberty, of royal sorrow and of popular exultation, now looked a vast circle of calm and stately beauty. How delusive is distance in every thing! Across that plain, luxuriant with harvest, surrounded with those soft hills, and glittering in the purple of this glorious evening, it looked a paradise. I knew it—a pendemonium!

I speeded on—every thing was animated and animating in my journey. It was the finest season of the year; the roads were good; the prospects—as I swept down valley and rushed round hill, with the insolent speed of a government employé, leaving all meaner vehicles, travellers, and the whole workday world behind—seemed to be to redeem the character of French landscape. But how much of its colouring was my own! Was I not free? was I not returning to England? was I not approaching scenes, and forms, and the realities of those recollections, which, even in the field of battle, and at the foot of the scaffold, had alternately cheered and pained, delighted and distressed me?—yet which, even with all their anxieties, were dearer than the most gilded hopes of ambition. Was I not about to meet the gay smile and poignant vivacity of Mariamne? was I not about to wander in the shades of my paternal castle? to see those relatives who were to shape so large a share of my future happiness; to meet in public life the eminent public men, with whose renown the courts and even the camps of Europe were already ringing: and last, proudest, and most profound feeling of all—was I not to venture near the shrine on which I had placed my idol; to offer her the solemn and distant homage of the heart; perhaps to hear of her from day to day; perhaps to see her noble beauty; perhaps even to hear that voice, of which the simplest accents sank to my soul.—But I must not attempt to describe sensations which are in their nature indescribable; which dispose the spirit of man to silence; and which, in their true intensity, suffer but one faculty to exist, absorbing all the rest in deep sleep and delicious reverie.

I drove with the haste of a courier to London; and after having deposited my despatches with one of the under-secretaries of the Foreign office, I flew to Mordecai's den in the city. London appeared to me more crowded than ever; the streets longer, and buildings dingier; and the whole, seen after the smokeless and light-coloured towns of the Continent, looked an enormous manufactory, where men wore themselves out in perpetual blackness and bustle, to make their bread, and die. But my heart beat quickly as I reached the door of that dingiest of all its dwellings, where the lord of 120hundreds of thousands of pounds burrowed himself on the eyes of mankind.

I knocked, but was long unanswered; at last a meagre clerk, evidently of the "fallen people," and who seemed dug up from the depths of the dungeon, gave me the intelligence that "his master and family had left England." The answer was like an icebolt through my frame. This was the moment to which I had looked forward with, I shall not say what emotions. I could scarcely define them; but they had a share of every strong, every faithful, and every touching remembrance of my nature. My disappointment was a pang. My head grey dizzy, I reeled; and asked leave to enter the gloomy door, and rest for a moment. But this the guardian of the den was too cautious to allow, and I should have probably fainted in the street, but for the appearance of an ancient Rebecca, the wife of the clerk, who, feeling the compassion which belongs to the sex in all instances, and exerting the authority which is so generally claimed by the better-halves of men, pushed her husband back, and led the way into the old cobwebbed parlour where I had so often been. A glass of water, the sole hospitality of the house, revived me; and after some enquiries alike fruitless with the past, I was about to take my leave, when the clerk, in his removal of some papers, not to be trusted within reach of a stranger, dropped a letter from the bundle, on which was my name. From the variety of addresses it had evidently travelled far, and had been returned from half the post-offices of the Continent. It was two months' old, but its news was to me most interesting. It was from Mordecai; and after alluding to some pecuniary transactions with his foreign brethren, always the first topic, he hurried on in his usual abrupt strain:—"Mariamne has insisted on my leaving England for a while. This is perplexing; as the war must produce a new loan, and London is, after all, the only place where those affairs can be transacted without trouble.—My child is well, and yet she looks pallid from time to time, and sheds tears when she thinks herself unobserved. All this may pass away, but it makes me uneasy; and, as she has evidently made up her mind to travel, I have only to give way—for, with all her caprices, she is my child, my only child, and my beloved child!

"I have heard a good deal of your proceedings from my correspondent and kinsman in Paris. You have acquitted yourself well, and it shall not be unknown in the quarter where it may be of most service to you.—I have been stopped by Mariamne's singing in the next room, and her voice has almost unmanned me; she is melancholy of late, and her only music now is taken from those ancestral hymns which our nation regard as the songs of the Captivity. Her tones at this moment are singularly touching, and I have been forced to lay down my pen, for she has melted me to tears. Yet her colour has not altogether faded lately, and I think sometimes that her eyes look brighter than ever! Heaven help me, if I should lose her. I should then be alone in the world.

"You may rely on my intelligence—a war is inevitable. You may also rely on my conjecture—that it will be the most desperate war which Europe has yet seen. One that will break up foundations, as well as break down superstructures; not a war of politics but of principles; not a war for conquest but for ruin. All the treasuries of Europe will be bankrupt within a twelvemonth of its commencement; unless England shall become their banker. This will be the harvest of the men of money.—It is unfortunate that your money is all lodged for your commission; otherwise, in the course of a few operations, you might make cent per cent, which I propose to do. Apropos of commissions. I had nearly omitted, in my own family anxieties, to mention the object for which I began my letter. I have failed in arranging the affair of your commission! This was not for want of zeal. But the prospect of a war has deranged and inflamed every thing. The young nobility have actually besieged the Horse-guards. All the weight of the aristocracy has pressed upon the minister, and minor influence has been driven from the field. The spirit is too gallant a one to be blamed;—and 121yet—are there not a hundred other pursuits, in which an intelligent and active mind, like your own, might follow on the way to fortune? You have seen enough of campaigning to know, that it is not all a flourish of trumpets. Has the world but one gate, and that the Horse-guards? If my personal judgment were to be asked, I should feel no regret for a disappointment which may have come only to turn your knowledge and ability to purposes not less suitable to an ambitious spirit, nor less likely to produce a powerful impression on the world—the only thing, after all, worth living for! You may laugh at this language from a man of my country and my trade. But even I have my ambition; and you may yet discover it to be not less bold than if I carried the lamp of Gideon, or wielded the sword of the Maccabee.—I must stop again; my poor restless child is coming into the room at this moment, complaining of the chill, in one of the finest days of summer. She says that this villa has grown sunless, airless, and comfortless. Finding that I am writing to you, she sends her best wishes; and bids me ask, what is the fashionable colour for mantles in Paris, and also what is become of that 'wandering creature,' Lafontaine, if you should happen to recollect such a personage."

"P.S.—My daughter insists on our setting out from Brighton to-morrow, and crossing the Channel the day after. She has a whim for revisiting Switzerland; and in the mean time begs that if, during our absence, you should have a whim for sea air and solitude, you may make of the villa any use you please.—Yours sincerely,

After reading this strange and broken letter, I was almost glad that I had not seen Mariamne. Lafontaine was in her heart still, in spite of absence. At this I did not wonder, for the heart of woman, when once struck, is almost incapable of change: but the suspense was killing her; and I had no doubt that her loss would sink even her strong-headed parent to the grave. Yet, what tidings had I to give? Whether her young soldier was shot in the attempt to escape from St Lazare, or thrown into some of those hideous dungeons, where so many thousands were dying in misery from day to day, was entirely beyond my power to tell. It was better that she should be roving over the bright hills, and breathing the fresh breezes of Switzerland, than listening to my hopeless conjectures at home; trying to reconcile herself to all the chances which passion is so painfully ingenious in creating, and dying, like a flower in all its beauty, on the spot where it had grown.

But the letter contained nothing of the one name, for which my first glance had looked over every line with breathless anxiety. There was not a syllable of Clotilde! The father's cares had absorbed all other thoughts; and the letter was to me a blank in that knowledge for which I panted, as the hart pants for the fountains. Still, I was not dead to the calls of friendship; and that night's mail carried a long epistle to Mordecai, detailing my escapes, and the services of his kindred in France; and for Mariamne's ear, all that I could conceive cheering in my hopes of that "wandering creature, Lafontaine."

But I was forced to think of sterner subjects. I had arrived in England at a time of the most extraordinary public excitement. Every man felt that some great trial of England and of Europe was at hand; but none could distinctly define either its nature or its cause. France, which had then begun to pour out her furious declamations against this country, was, of course, generally looked to as the quarter from which the storm was to come; but the higher minds evidently contemplated hazards nearer home. Affiliated societies, corresponding clubs, and all the revolutionary apparatus, from whose crush and clamour I had so lately emerged, met the ear and the eye on all occasions; and the fiery ferocity of French rebellion was nearly rivalled by the grave insolence of English "Rights of Man." But I am not about to write the history of a time of national fever. The republicanism, which Cicero and Plutarch instil into us all at our schools, had been extinguished in me by the squalid realities of France. I had seen the dissecting-room, and was cured of 122my love for the science. My spirit, too, required rest. I could have exclaimed with all the sincerity, and with all the weariness too, of the poet:—

Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,

Some boundless contiguity of shade,

Where rumour of oppression and deceit,

Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more!"

But, perhaps fortunately for my understanding, if not for my life, I was not suffered to take refuge in the wilderness. London was around me; rich and beggared, splendid and sullen, idle and busy London. I was floating on those waves of human being, in which the struggler must make for the shore, or sink. I was in the centre of that huge whispering gallery, where every sound of earth was echoed and re-echoed with new power; and where it was impossible to dream. My days were now spent in communication with the offices of government, and a large portion of my nights in carrying on those correspondences, which, though seldom known in the routine of Downing Street, form the essential part of its intercourse with the continental cabinets. But a period of suspense still remained. Parliament had been already summoned for the 13th of December. Up to nearly the last moment, the cabinet had been kept in uncertainty as to the actual intents of France. There had been declamation in abundance in the French legislature and the journals; but with this unsubstantial evidence the cabinet could not meet the country. Couriers were sent in all directions; boats were stationed along the coast to bring the first intelligence of actual hostilities suddenly; every conceivable expedient was adopted; but all in vain. The day of opening the Session was within twenty-four hours. After lingering hour by hour, in expectancy of the arrival of despatches from our ambassador at the Hague, I offered to cross the sea in the first fishing-boat which I could find, and ascertain the facts. My offer was accepted; and in the twilight of a winter's morning, and in the midst of a snow-storm, I was making my shivering way homeward through the wretched lanes which, dark as pitch and narrow as footpaths, then led to the centre of the diplomatic world; when, in my haste, I had nearly overset a meagre figure, which, half-blinded by the storm, was tottering towards the Foreign office. After a growl, in the most angry jargon, the man recognized me; he was the clerk whom I had seen at Mordecai's house. He had, but an hour before, received, by one of the private couriers of the firm, a letter, with orders to deliver it with all expedition. He put it into my hand: it was not from Mordecai, but from Elnathan, and was simply in these words:—"My kinsman and your friend has desired me to forward to you the first intelligence of hostilities. I send you a copy of the bulletin which will be issued at noon this day. It is yet unknown; but I have it from a source on which you may perfectly rely. Of this make what use you think advantageous. Your well-wisher."

With what pangs the great money-trafficker must have consigned to my use a piece of intelligence which must have been a mine of wealth to any one who carried it first to the Stock Exchange, I could easily conjecture. But I saw in it the powerful pressure of Mordecai, which none of his tribe seemed even to have the means of resisting. My sensations were singular enough as I traced my way up the dark and lumbering staircase of the Foreign office; with the consciousness that, if I had chosen to turn my steps in another direction, I might before night be master of thousands, or of hundreds of thousands. But it is only due to the sense of honour which had been impressed on me, even in the riot and roughness of my Eton days, to say, that I did not hesitate for a moment Sending one of the attendants to arouse the chief clerk, I stood waiting his arrival with the bulletin unopened in my hands. The official had gone to his house in the country, and might not return for some hours. My perplexity increased. Every moment might supersede the value of my priority. At length a twinkling light through the chinks of one of the dilapidated doors, told me that there was some one within, from whom I might, at least, ask when and how ministers 123were to be approached. The door was opened, and, to my surprise, I found that the occupant of the chamber was one of the most influential members of administration. My name and purpose were easily given; and I was received as I believe few are in the habit of being received by the disposers of high things in high places. The fire had sunk to embers, the lamp was dull, and the hearer was half frozen and half asleep. Yet no sooner had he cast his eyes upon the mysterious paper which I gave into his grasp, than all his faculties were in full activity.

"This," said he, "is the most important paper that has reached this country since the taking of the Bastile. THE SCHELDT IS OPENED! This involves an attack on Holland; the defence of our ally is a matter of treaty, and we must arm without delay. The war is begun, but where it shall end"—he paused, and fixing his eyes above, with a solemnity of expression which I had not expected in the stern and hard-lined countenance, "or who shall live to see its close—who shall tell?"

"We have been waiting," said he, "for this intelligence from week to week, with the fullest expectation that it would come; and yet, when it has come, it strikes like a thunderclap. This is the third night that I have sat in this hovel, at this table, unable to go to rest, and looking for the despatch from hour to hour.—You see, sir, that our life is at least not the bed of roses for which the world is so apt to give us credit. It is like the life of my own hills—the higher the sheiling stands, the more it gets of the blast."

I do not give the name of this remarkable man. He was a Scot, and possessed of all the best characteristics of his country. I had heard him in Parliament, where he was the most powerful second of the most powerful first that England had seen. But if all men were inferior to the prime minister in majesty and fulness of conception, the man to whom I now listened had no superior in readiness of retort, in aptness of illustration—that mixture of sport and satire, of easy jest and subtle sarcasm, which forms the happiest talent for the miscellaneous uses of debate. If Pitt moved forward like the armed man of chivalry, or rather like the main body of the battle—for never man was more entitled to the appellation of a "host in himself"—never were front, flanks, and rear of the host covered by a more rapid, quick-witted, and indefatigable auxiliary. He was a man of family, and brought with him into public life, not the manners of a menial of office, but the bearing of a gentleman. Birth and blood were in his bold and manly countenance; and I could have felt no difficulty in conceiving him, if his course had followed his nature, the chieftain on his hills, at the head of his gallant retainers, pursuing the wild sports of his romantic region; or in some foreign land, gathering the laurels which the Scotch soldier has so often and so proudly added to the honours of the empire.

He was perfectly familiar with the great question of the time, and saw the full bearings of my intelligence with admirable sagacity; pointed out the inevitable results of suffering France to take upon herself the arbitration of Europe, and gave new and powerful views of the higher relation in which England was to stand, as the general protectress of the Continent. "This bulletin," said he, "announces the fact, that a French squadron has actually sailed up the Scheldt to attack Antwerp. Yet it was not ten years since France protested against the same act by Austria, as a violation of the rights of Holland. The new aggression is, therefore, not simply a solitary violence, but a vast fraud; not merely the breach of an individual treaty, but a declaration that no treaty is henceforth to be held as binding; it is more than an act of rapine; it is an universal dissolution of the principles by which society is held together. In what times are we about to live?"

My reply was—"That it depended on the spirit of England herself, whether the conflict was to be followed by honour or by shame; that she had a glorious career before her, if she had magnanimity sufficient to take the part marked out for her by circumstances; and that, with the championship of the world in her hands, even defeat would be a triumph."

He now turned the conversation to 124myself; spoke with more than official civility of my services, and peculiarly of the immediate one; and asked in what branch of diplomacy I desired advancement?

My answer was prompt. "In none. I desired promotion but in one way—the army." I then briefly stated the accidental loss of my original appointment, and received, before I left the chamber, a note for the secretary at war, recommending me, in the strongest terms, for a commission in the Guards.—The world was now before me, and the world in the most vivid, various, and dazzling shape; in the boldest development of grandeur, terror, and wild vicissitude, which it exhibited for a thousand years—ENGLAND WAS AT WAR!

There is no sight on earth more singular, or more awful, than a great nation going to war. I saw the scene in its highest point of view, by seeing it in England. Its perfect freedom, its infinite, and often conflicting, variety of opinion—its passionate excitement, and its stupendous power, gave the summons to hostilities a character of interest, of grandeur, and of indefinite but vast purposes, unexampled in any other time, or in any other country. When one of the old monarchies commenced war, the operation, however large and formidable, was simple. A monarch resolved, a council sat, less to guide than to echo his resolution; an army marched, invaded the enemy's territory, fought a battle—perhaps a dubious one—rested on its arms; and while Te Deum was sung in both capitals alike for the "victory" of neither, the ministers of both were constructing an armistice, a negotiation, and a peace—each and all to be null and void on the first opportunity.

But the war of England was a war of the nation—a war of wrath and indignation—a war of the dangers of civilized society entrusted to a single championship—a great effort of human nature to discharge, in the shape of blood, a disease which was sapping the vitals of Europe; or in a still higher, and therefore a more faithful view, the gathering of a tempest, which, after sweeping France in its fury, was to restore the exhausted soil and blasted vegetation of monarchy throughout the Continent; and in whose highest, England, serene and undismayed, was to

"Ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm."

I must acknowledge, that I looked upon the coming conflict with a strange sense of mingled alarm and rejoicing. For the latter feeling, perhaps I ought to make some apology; but I was young, ardent, and ambitious. My place in life was unfixed; standing in that unhappy middle position, in which stands a man of birth too high to suffer his adoption of the humbler means of existence, and yet of resources too inadequate to sustain him without action—nay, bold and indefatigable exertion. I, at the moment, felt a very inferior degree of compunction at the crisis which offered to give me at least a chance of being seen, known, and understood among men. I felt like a man whose ship was stranded, and who saw the storm lifting the surges that were to lift him along with them; or like the traveller in an earthquake, who saw the cleft in the ground swallowing up the river which had hitherto presented an impassable obstacle—cities and mountains might sink before the concussion had done its irresistible will, but, at all events, it had cleared his way.

In thoughts like these, rash and unconnected as they were, I spent many a restless day, and still more restless night. I often sprang from a pillow which, if I had lived in the days of witchcraft, I should have thought spelled to refuse me sleep; and walking for hours, endeavoured to reduce into shape the speculations which filled my mind with splendours and catastrophes worthy of oriental dreams. Why did I not then pursue the career in which I had begun the world? Why not devote myself to diplomacy, in which I had hitherto received honour? Why not enter into Parliament, which opened all the secrets of power? For this I had two reasons. The first—and, let me confess, the most imperious—was, that my pride had been deeply hurt by the loss of my commission. I felt that I had not only been deprived of a noble profession, accidental as was the loss; but that I had subjected myself to the trivial, but stinging remarks, which never 125fail to find an obnoxious cause for every failure. While this cloud hung over me, I was determined never to return to my father's house. Good-natured as the friends of my family might be, I was fully aware of the style in which misfortune is treated in the idleness of country life; and the Honourable Mr Marston's loss of his rank in his Majesty's guards, or his preference of a more pacific promotion, was too tempting a topic to lose any of its stimulants by the popular ignorance of the true transaction. My next reason was, that my mind was harassed and wearied by disappointment, until I should not have regreted to terminate the struggle in the first field of battle. The only woman whom I loved, and whom, in the strange frenzy of passion, I solemnly believed to be the only woman on earth deserving to be so loved, had wholly disappeared, and was, by this time, probably wedded. The only woman whom I regarded as a friend, was in another country, probably dying. If I could have returned to Mortimer Castle—which I had already determined to be impossible—I should have found only a callous, perhaps a contemptuous, head of the family, angry at my return to burden him. Even Vincent—my old and kind-hearted friend Vincent—had been a soldier; and though I was sure of never receiving a reproach from his wise and gentle lips, was I equally sure that I could escape the flash, or the sorrow, of his eye?

In thoughts like these, and they were dangerous ones, I made many a solitary rush out into the wild winds and beating snows of the winter, which had set in early and been remarkably severe; walking bareheaded in the most lonely places of the suburbs, stripping my bosom to the blast, and longing for its tenfold chill to assuage the fever which burned within me. I had also found the old delay at the Horse-guards. The feelings of this period make me look with infinite compassion on the unhappy beings who take their lives into their own hands, and who extinguish all their earthly anxieties at a plunge. But I had imbibed principles of a firmer substance, and but upon one occasion, and one alone, felt tempted to an act of despair.

Taking my lonely dinner in a tavern of the suburbs, the waiter handed me a newspaper, which he had rescued for my behoof from the hands of a group, eager, as all the world then was, for French intelligence. My eye rambled into the fashionable column; and the first paragraph, headed "Marriage in high life," announced that, on the morrow, were to be solemnized the nuptials of Clotilde, Countess de Tourville, with the Marquis de Montrecour, colonel of the French Mousquetaires, &c. The paper dropped from my hands. I rushed out of the house; and, scarcely knowing where I went, I hurried on, until I found myself out of the sight or sound of mortal. The night was pitch-dark; there was no lamp near; the wind roared; and it was only by the flash of the foam that I discovered the broad sheet of water before me. I had strayed into Hyde Park, and was on the bank of the Serpentine. With what ease might I not finish all! It was another step. Life was a burden—thought was a torment—the light of day a loathing. But the paroxysm soon gave way. Impressions of the duty and the trials of human nature, made in earlier years, revived within me with a singular freshness and force. Tears gushed from my eyes, fast and flowing; and, with a long-forgotten prayer for patience and humility, I turned from the place of temptation. As I reached the streets once more, I heard the trumpets of the Life Guards, and the band of a battalion returning to their quarters. The infantry were the Coldstream. They had been lining the streets for the king's procession to open the sitting of Parliament. This was the 13th of December—the memorable day to which every heart in Europe was more or less vibrating; yet which I had totally forgotten. What is man but an electrical machine after all? The sound and sight of soldiership restored me to the full vividness of my nature. The machine required only to be touched, to shoot out its latent sparks; and with a new spirit and a new determination kindling through every fibre, I hastened to be present at that debate which was to be the judgment of nations.

My official intercourse with ministers 126had given me some privileges, and I obtained a seat under the gallery—that part of the House of Commons which is occasionally allotted to strangers of a certain rank. The House was crowded, and every countenance was pictured with interest and solemn anxiety. Grey, Sheridan, and other distinguished names of party, had already taken their seats; but the great heads of Government and Opposition were still absent. At length a buzz among the crowd who filled the floor,—and the name of Fox repeated in every tone of congratulation, announced the pre-eminent orator of England. I now saw Fox for the first time; and I was instantly struck with the incomparable similitude of all that I saw of him to all that I had conceived from his character and his style. In the broad bold forehead, the strong sense—in the relaxed mouth, the self-indulgent and reckless enjoyment—in the quick, small eye under those magnificent black brows, the man of sagacity, of sarcasm, and of humour; and in the grand contour of a countenance and head, which might have been sculptured to take its place among the sages and sovereigns of antiquity, the living proof of those extraordinary powers, which could have been checked in their ascent to the highest elevation of public life, only by prejudices and passions not less extraordinary. As he advanced up the House, he recognized every one on both sides, and spoke or smiled to nearly all. He stopped once or twice in his way, and was surrounded by a circle with whom, as I could judge from their laughter, he exchanged some pleasantry of the hour. When at length he arrived at the seat which had been reserved for him, he threw himself upon it with the easy look of comfort of a man who had reached home—gave nod to Windham, held out a finger to Grey, warmly shook hands with Sheridan; and then, opening his well-known blue and buff costume, threw himself back into the bench, and laughingly gasped for air.

But another movement of the crowd at the bar announced another arrival, and Pitt entered the House. His look and movement were equally characteristic with those of his great rival. He looked to neither the right nor the left; replied to the salutations of his friends by the slightest possible bow; neither spoke nor smiled; but, slowly advancing, took his seat in total silence. The Speaker, hitherto occupied with some routine business, now read the King's speech, and, calling on "Mr Pitt," the minister rose. I have for that rising but one description—the one which filled my memory at the moment, from the noblest poet of the world.

"Deep on his front engraven,

Deliberation sat, and public care.

Sage he stood,

With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies. His look

Drew audience and attention, still as night,

Or summer's noontide air."

THE WEEK OF AN EMPEROR.

The week ending the 8th of June, was the most brilliant that ever occupied and captivated the fashionable world of a metropolis of two millions of souls, the head of an empire of two hundred millions. The recollection runs us out of breath. Every hour was a new summons to a new fête, a new fantasy, or a new exhibition of the handsomest man of the forty-two millions of Russia proper. The toilettes of the whole beau monde were in activity from sunny morn to dewy eve; and from dewy eve to waxlighted midnight. A parade of the Guards, by which the world was tempted into rising at ten o'clock; a dejeuner à la fourchette, by which it was surprised into dining at three, (more majorum;) an opera, by which those whose hour for going out is eleven, were forced into their carriages at nine; a concert at Hanover Square, finished by a ball and supper at Buckingham palace;—all were among those brilliant perversions of the habits of high life which make the week one brilliant tumult; but which never could have been revolutionized but by an emperor in the flower of his age. Wherever he moved, he was followed by a host of the fair and fashionable. The showy equipages of the nobility were in perpetual motion. The parks were a whirlwind of horsemen and horsewomen. The streets were a levy en masse of the peerage. The opera-house was a gilded "black hole of Calcutta." The front of Buckingham palace was a scene of loyalty, dangerous to life and limb; men, careful of either, gave their shillings for a glimpse through a telescope; and shortsighted ladies fainted, that they might be carried into houses which gave then a full view. Mivart's, the retreat of princes, had the bustle of a Bond Street hotel. Ashburnham House was in a state of siege. And Buckingham palace, with its guards, cavalcades, musterings of the multitude, and thundering of brass bands, seemed to be the focus of a national revolution. But it was within the palace that the grand display existed. The gilt candelabra, the gold plate, the maids of honour, all fresh as tares in June; and the ladies in waiting, all Junos and Minervas, all jewelled, and none under forty-five, enraptured the mortal eye, to a degree unrivalled in the recollections of the oldest courtier, and unrecorded in the annals of queenly hospitality.

"Bridle in our struggling muse with pain,

That longs to launch into a nobler strain."

During this week, but one question was asked by the universal world of St James's—"What was the cause of the Czar's coming?"

Every one answered in his own style. The tourists—a race who cannot live without rambling through the same continental roads, which they libel for their roughness every year; the same hotels, which they libel for their discomforts; and the same table-d'hotes, which they libel as the perfection of bad cookery, and barefaced chicane—pronounced that the love of travel was the imperial impulse. The politicians of the clubs—who, having nothing to do for themselves, manage the affairs of all nations, and can discover high treason in the manipulation of a toothpick, and symptoms of war in a waltz—were of opinion, that the Czar had come either to construct an European league against the marriage of little Queen Isabella, or to beat up for recruits for the "holy" hostilities of Morocco. With the fashionable world, the decision was, that he had come to see Ascot races, and the Duke of Devonshire's gardens, before the sun withered, or St Swithin washed them away. The John Bull world—as wise at least as any of their betters, who love a holiday, and think Whitsuntide the happiest period of the year for that reason, and Greenwich hill the finest spot in creation—were convinced that his Majesty's visit was merely that of a good-humoured and active gentleman, glad to escape from 128the troubles of royalty and the heaviness of home, and take a week's ramble among the oddities of England. "Who shall decide," says Pope, "when doctors disagree?" Perhaps the nearest way of reaching the truth is, to take all the reasons together, and try how far they may be made to agree. What can be more probable than that the fineness of the finest season within memory, the occurrence of a moment of leisure in the life of a monarch ruling a fifth of the habitable globe, roused the curiosity of an intelligent mind, excited, like that of his great ancestor Peter, by a wish to see the national improvements of the great country of engineering, shipbuilding, and tunnelling; perhaps with Ascot races—the most showy exhibition of the most beautiful horses in the world—to wind up the display, might tempt a man of vigorous frame and active spirit, to gallop across Europe, and give seven brief days to England!

An additional conjecture has been proposed by the papers presumed to be best informed in cabinet secrets; that this rapid journey has had for its distinct purpose the expression of the Imperial scorn for the miserable folly and malignant coxcombry of the pamphlet on the French navy; which has excited so much contempt in England, and so much boasting in France, and so much surprise and ridicule every where else in Europe. Nothing could be more in consonance with a manly character, than to show how little it shared the conceptions of a coxcomb; and no more direct mode could be adopted than the visit, to prove his willingness to be on the best terms with her government and her people. We readily receive this conjecture, because it impresses a higher character on the whole transaction; it belongs to an advanced spirit of royal intercourse, and it constitutes an important pledge for that European peace, which is the greatest benefaction capable of being conferred by kings.

The Emperor may be said to have come direct from St Petersburg, as his stops on the road were only momentary. He reached Berlin from his capital with courier's speed, in four days and six hours, on Sunday fortnight last. His arrival was so unexpected, that the Russian ambassador in Prussia was taken by surprise. He travelled through Germany incognito, and on Thursday night, the 30th, arrived at the Hague. Next day, at two o'clock, he embarked at Rotterdam for England. Here, two steamers had been prepared for his embarkation. The steamers anchored for the night at Helvoetsluys. At three in the following morning, they continued the passage, arriving at Woolwich at ten. The Russian ambassador and officers of the garrison prepared to receive him; but on his intimating his particular wish to land in private, the customary honours were dispensed with. Shortly after ten, the Emperor landed. He was dressed in the Russian costume, covered with an ample and richly-furred cloak. After a stay of a few minutes, he entered Baron Brunow's carriage with Count Orloff, and drove to the Russian embassy. The remainder of the day was given to rest after his fatigue.

On the next morning, Sunday, Prince Albert paid a visit to the Emperor. They met on the grand staircase, and embraced each other cordially in the foreign style. The Prince proposed that the Emperor should remove to the apartments which were provided for him in the palace—an offer which was politely declined. At eleven, the Emperor attended divine service at the chapel of the Russian embassy in Welbeck Street. At half-past one, Prince Albert arrived to conduct him to the palace. He wore a scarlet uniform, with the riband and badge of the Garter. The Queen received the Emperor in the grand hall. A dejeuner was soon afterwards served. The remainder of the day was spent in visits to the Queen-Dowager and the Royal Family. One visit of peculiar interest was paid. The Emperor drove to Apsley House, to visit the Duke of Wellington. The Duke received him in the hall, and conducted him to the grand saloon on the first floor. The meeting on both sides was most cordial. The Emperor conversed much and cheerfully with the illustrious Duke, and complimented him highly on the beauty of his pictures, and the magnificence of his mansion. But even 129emperors are but men, and the Czar, fatigued with his round of driving, on his return to the embassy fell asleep, and slumbered till dinner-time, though his Royal Highness of Cambridge and the Monarch of Saxony called to visit him. At a quarter to eight o'clock, three of the royal carriages arrived, for the purpose of conveying the Emperor and his suite to Buckingham palace.

On Monday, the Emperor rose at seven. After breakfast he drove to Mortimer's, the celebrated jeweller's, where he remained for an hour, and is said to have purchased L.5000 worth of jewellery. He then drove to the Zoological gardens and the Regent's park. In the course of the drive, he visited Sir Robert Peel, and the families of some of our ambassadors in Russia. At three o'clock, he gave a dejeuner to the Duke of Devonshire, who had also been an ambassador in Russia. Dover Street was crowded with the carriages of the nobility, who came to put down their names in the visiting-book.

At five, a guard of honour of the First Life-Guards came to escort him to the railway, on his visit to Windsor; but on his observing its arrival, he expressed a wish to decline the honour, for the purpose of avoiding all parade. The Queen's carriages had arrived, and the Emperor and his suite drove off through streets crowded with horsemen. On arriving at the railway station, the Emperor examined the electrical telegraph, and, entering the saloon carriage, the train set off, and arrived at Slough, a distance of nearly twenty miles, in the astonishingly brief time of twenty-five minutes.

At the station, the Emperor was met by Prince Albert, and conveyed to the castle.

The banquet took place in the Waterloo chamber, a vast hall hung with portraits of the principal sovereigns and statesmen of Europe, to paint which, the late Sir Thomas Laurence had been sent on a special mission at the close of the war in 1815. Sir Thomas's conception of form and likeness was admirable, but his colouring was cold and thin. His "Waterloo Gallery" forms a melancholy contrast with the depth and richness of the adjoining "Vandyk Chamber;" but his likenesses are complete. The banquet was royally splendid. The table was covered with gold plate and chased ornaments of remarkable beauty—the whole lighted by rows of gold candelabra. The King of Saxony, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, and the chief noblemen of the household, were present at the entertainment.

TUESDAY.

This was the day of Ascot races. The road from Windsor to the course passes through a couple of miles of the rich quiet scenery which peculiarly belongs to England. The course itself is a file open plain, commanding an extensive view. Some rumours, doubting the visit of the royal party, excited a double interest in the first sight of the cavalcade, preceded by the royal yeomen, galloping up to the stand. They were received with shouts. The Emperor, the King of Saxony, and Prince Albert, were in the leading carriage. They were attired simply as private gentlemen, in blue frock-coats. The Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and the household, followed in the royal carriages. The view of the Stand at this period was striking, and the royal and noble personages were repeatedly cheered. An announcement was conveyed to the people, that the Emperor had determined to give L.500 a-year to the course. The Czarewitch had already given L.200 at Newmarket. The announcement was received with renewed cheering. All kings are fond of horses; and the monarch of the most numerous and active cavalry in the world, may be allowed to be a connoisseur in their strength, swiftness, and perseverance, by a superior right. The Emperor can call out 80,000 Cossacks at a sound of his trumpet. He exhibited an evident interest in the races. The horses were saddled before the race in front of the grand stand, and brought up to it after the race, for the purpose of weighing the jockeys. He had a full opportunity of inspection; but not content with this, when the winner of the gold vase, the mare Alice Hawthorn, was brought up to the stand, 130he descended, and examined this beautiful animal with the closeness and critical eye of a judge.

On Wednesday, the pageant in which emperors most delight was exhibited—a review of the royal guards. There are so few troops in England, as the Prince de Joinville has "the happiness" to observe, that a review on the continental scale of tens of thousands, is out of the question. Yet, to the eye which can discern the excellence of soldiership, and the completeness of soldierly equipment, the few in line before the Emperor on this day, were enough to gratify the intelligent eye which this active monarch turns upon every thing. The infantry were—the second battalion of the grenadier guards, the second battalion of the Coldstream guards, the second battalion of the fusilier guards, and the forty-seventh regiment. The cavalry were—two troops of the royal horse guards, (blue,) the first regiment of the life guards, and the seventeenth lancers. The artillery were—detachments of the royal horse artillery, and the field artillery.

A vast multitude from London by the trains, and from the adjoining country, formed a line parallel to the troops; and nothing could exceed the universal animation and cheering when the Emperor, the King of Saxony, and the numerous and glittering staff, entered the field, and came down the line.

After the usual salutes, and marching past the centre, where the royal carriages had taken their stand, the evolutions began. They were few and simple, but of that order which is most effective in the field. The formation of the line from the sections; the general advance of the line; the halt, and a running fire along the whole front; the breaking up of the line into squares; the squares firing, then deploying into line, and marching to the rear. The Queen, with the royal children, left the ground before the firing began, The review was over at half-past two. The appearance of the troops was admirable; the manoeuvres were completely successful; and the fineness of the day gave all the advantages of sun and landscape to this most brilliant spectacle.

But the most characteristic portion of the display consisted in the commanding-officers who attended, to give this unusual mark of respect to the Emperor.

Wellington, the "conqueror of a hundred fights," rode at the head of the grenadier guards, as their colonel Lord Combermere, general of the cavalry in the Peninsula, rode at the head of his regiment, the first life guards. The Marquis of Anglesey, general of the cavalry at Waterloo, rode at the head of his regiment, the royal horse guards. Sir George Murray, quartermaster-general in the Peninsula, rode at the head of the artillery, as master-general of the ordnance. His royal highness the Duke of Cambridge rode at the head of his regiment, the Coldstream. His royal highness Prince Albert rode at the head of his regiment, the Scotch fusiliers. General Sir William Anson rode at the head of his regiment, the forty-seventh. Lieutenant-Colonel Quentin rode at the head of the seventeenth lancers, the colonel of the regiment, Prince George of Cambridge, being in the Ionian Islands. Thus, three field-marshals, and four generals, passed in review before the illustrious guests of her Majesty. The Emperor expressed himself highly gratified; as every eye accustomed to troops must have been, by the admirable precision of the movements, and the fine appearance of the men. A striking instance of the value of railways for military operations, was connected with this review. The forty-seventh regiment, quartered in Gosport, was brought to Windsor in the morning, and sent back in the evening of the review day; the journey, altogether, was about 140 miles! Such are the miracles of machinery in our days. This was certainly an extraordinary performance, when we recollect that it was the conveyance of about 700 men; and shows what might be done in case of any demand for the actual services of the troops. But even this exploit will be eclipsed within a few days, by the opening of the direct line from London to Newcastle, which will convey troops, or any thing, 300 miles in twelve hours. The next step will be to reach Edinburgh in a day! 131 The Emperor was observed to pay marked attention to the troops of the line, the forty-seventh and the lancers; observing, as it is said, "your household troops are noble fellows; but what I wished particularly to see, were the troops with which you gained your victories in India and China." A speech of this kind was worthy of the sagacity of a man who knew where the true strength of a national army lies, and who probably, besides, has often had his glance turned to the dashing services of our soldiery in Asia. The household troops of every nation are select men, and the most showy which the country can supply. Thus they are nearly of equal excellence. The infantry of ours, it is true, have been always "fighting regiments"—the first in every expedition, and distinguished for the gallantry of their conduct in every field. The cavalry, though seldomer sent on foreign service, exhibited pre-eminent bravery in the Peninsula, and their charges at Waterloo were irresistible. But it is of the marching regiments that the actual "army" consists, and their character forms the character of the national arms.

In the evening the Emperor and the King of Saxony dined with her Majesty at Windsor.

THURSDAY.

The royal party again drove to the Ascot course, and were received with the usual acclamations. The Emperor and King were in plain clothes, without decorations of any kind; Prince Albert wore the Windsor uniform. The cheers were loud for Wellington.

The gold cup, value three hundred guineas, was the principal prize. Eight horses ran, and the cup was won by a colt of Lord Albemarle's. His lordship is lucky, at least on the turf. He won the cup at Ascot last year.

FRIDAY.

The royal party came to London by the railway. The Emperor spent the chief part of the day in paying visits, in the Russian ambassador's private carriage, to his personal friends—chiefly the families of those noblemen who had been ambassadors to Russia.

SATURDAY.

The Emperor, the King, and Prince Albert, went to the Duke of Devonshire's dejeuner at Chiswick. The Duke's mansion and gardens are proverbial as evidences of his taste, magnificence, and princely expenditure. All the nobility in London at this period were present. The royal party were received with distinguished attention by the noble host, and his hospitality was exhibited in a style worthy of his guests and himself. While the suite of salons were thrown open for the general company, the royal party were received in a salon which had been decorated as a Turkish tent. Bands of the guards played in the gardens, a quadille band played in the ball-room, and the fineness of the weather gave the last charm to a fête prepared with equal elegance and splendour. We doubt whether Europe can exhibit any open air festivity that can compete with a dejeuner at Chiswick. The gardens of some of the continental palaces are larger, but they want the finish of the English garden. Their statues and decorations are sometimes fine; but they want the perfect and exquisite neatness which gives an especial charm to English horticulture. The verdure of the lawns, the richness and variety of the flowers, and the general taste displayed, in even the most minute and least ornamental features, render the English garden wholly superior, in fitness and in beauty, to the gardens of the continental sovereigns and nobility.

In the evening, the Queen and her guests went to the Italian opera. The house was greatly, and even hazardously crowded. It is said that, in some instances, forty guineas was paid for a box. But whether this may be an exaggeration or not, the sum would have been well worth paying, to escape the tremendous pressure in the pit. After all, the majority of the spectators were disappointed in their principal object, the view of the royal party. They all sat far back in the box, and thus, to three-fourths of the house, were completely invisible. In this privacy, for which it is not easy to account, and which it would have been so much wiser to have avoided, 132the audience were long kept in doubt whether the national anthem was to be sung. At last, a stentorian voice from the gallery called for it. A general response was made by the multitude; the curtain rose, and God save the Queen was sung with acclamation. The ice thus broken, it was followed by the Russian national anthem, a firm, rich, and bold composition. The Emperor was said to have shed tears at the unexpected sound of that noble chorus, which brought back the recollection of his country at so vast a distance from home. But if these anthems had not been thus accidentally performed, the royal party would have lost a much finer display than any thing which they could have seen on the stage—the rising of the whole audience in the boxes—all the fashionable world in gala, in its youth, beauty, and ornament, seen at full sight, while the chorus was on the stage.

SUNDAY.

On this day at two o'clock, the Emperor, after taking leave of the Queen and the principal members of the Royal family, embarked at Woolwich in the government steamer, the Black Eagle, commanded for the time by the Earl of Hardwicke. The vessel dropped down the river under the usual salutes from the batteries at Woolwich; the day was serene, and the Black Eagle cut the water with a keel as smooth as it was rapid. The Emperor entered into the habits of the sailor with as much ease as he had done into those of the soldier. He conversed good-humouredly with the officers and men, admired the discipline and appearance of the marines, who had been sent as his escort, was peculiarly obliging to Lord Hardwicke and Lieutenant Peel, (a son of the premier,) and ordered his dinner on deck, that he might enjoy the scenery on the banks of the Thames. The medals of some of the marines who had served in Syria, attracted his attention, and he enquired into the nature of their services. He next expressed a wish to see the manual exercise performed, which of course was done; and his majesty, taking a musket, went through the Russian manual exercise. On his arrival on the Dutch coast, the King of Holland came out to meet him in a steamer; and on his landing, the British crew parted with him with three cheers. The Imperial munificence was large to a degree which we regret; for it would be much more gratifying to the national feelings to receive those distinguished strangers, without suffering the cravers for subscriptions to intrude themselves into their presence.

On the Emperor's landing in Holland, he reviewed a large body of Dutch troops, and had intended to proceed up the Rhine, and enjoy the landscape of its lovely shores at his leisure. But for him there is no leisure; and his project was broken up by the anxious intelligence of the illness of one of his daughters by a premature confinement. He immediately changed his route, and set off at full speed for St Petersburg.

Anglesey, is	1 in 3900
Carnarvon,	1 in 2452
Selkirk,	1 in 1990
Cumberland,	1 in 1194

Aberdeenshire, is	1 in 2086
East-Lothian,	1 in 994
Northumberland,	1 in 1106
Perthshire,	1 in 1181

Lancashire, is	1 in 418
Staffordshire,	1 in 482
Middlesex,	1 in 439
Yorkshire,	1 in 839
Lanarkshire,	1 in 832³
Renfrewshire,	1 in 306

BLACKWOOD'S

Edinburgh

MAGAZINE.

VOL. LVI.

JULY-DECEMBER, 1844.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINGURGH,

AND

22, PALL MALL, LONDON.

1844.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXLV. JULY, 1844. VOL. LVI.

CONTENTS.

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;

AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.

To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed.

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXLV. JULY, 1844. VOL. LVI.

CAUSES OF THE INCREASE OF CRIME.

THE HEART OF THE BRUCE.

A BALLAD.

MEMORANDUMS OF A MONTH'S TOUR IN SICILY.

THE MUSEUM OF PALERMO.

LUNATIC ASYLUM.

MISCELLANEA.

JOURNEY TO SEGESTE.

SICILIAN INNS.

APPROACH TO MESSINA.

JOURNEY TO TAORMINA.

CATANIA.

THE LAST OF THE KNIGHTS.

DON JOHN AND THE HERETICS OF FLANDERS.

Part II.

POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE.

No. I.

INTRODUCTION.

THE BRIDE OF CORINTH.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

FIRST LOVE.

WHO'LL BUY A CUPID?

SECOND LIFE.

THE ERL KING.

MIGNON.

THE FISHER.

THE MINSTREL.

THE VIOLET.

THE DOLEFUL LAY OF THE NOBLE WIFE OF ASAN AGA.

MY FIRST LOVE.

A SKETCH IN NEW YORK.

PORTUGAL.³⁵