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Title: The International Magazine, Vol. IV. New-York, December 1, 1851. No. V. - Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. IV. New-York, December - 1, 1851. No. V
Author: Various
Language: English
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[Illustration: DECEMBER.
VOL. IV. No. 5
THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE.
New-York: STRINGER & TOWNSEND. 1851.
J.W. ORR, N.Y.]
Contents for December.
NAUVOO AND DESERET: THE MORMONS. _Six Engravings_, 577
WINDSOR CASTLE AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS. _Two Engravings_, 585
M. JULES GERARD AND THE BARON MUNCHAUSEN, IN AFRICA, 587
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, AND HIS WORKS: _Portrait_, 588
SLIDING SCALES OF DESPAIR, 592
DEATH IN YOUTH: BY H. W. PARKER, 593
A GERMAN HAND-BOOK OF AMERICA, 593
GONDOLETTAS: TWO SONGS: BY ALICE B. NEAL, 597
THE DUTCH GOVERNORS OF NEW AMSTERDAM: BY J. R. BRODHEAD, 597
AN AUTUMN BALLAD: BY W. A. SUTLIFFE, 598
CARLYLE'S LIFE OF JOHN STERLING, 599
SONGS OF THE CASCADE: BY A. OAKEY HALL, 602
HERMAN MELVILLE'S NEW NOVEL OF "THE WHALE," 602
A STORY WITHOUT A NAME: BY G. P. R. JAMES. _Concluded_, 604
CALCUTTA: SOCIAL, INDUSTRIAL, POLITICAL.--_Bentley's Miscellany_, 611
REVOLUTIONS IN RUSSIA. BY ALEXANDER DUMAS.--_Sharpe's Magazine_, 616
DRINKING EXPERIENCES: A TEMPERANCE LECTURE BY "NIMROD," 621
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY COMPARED: BY THE LATE J. F. COOPER, 625
A BULL FIGHT AT RONDA.--_United Service Magazine_, 631
VAGARIES OF THE IMAGINATION.--_Chambers's Edinburgh Journal_, 638
THE FRENCH FLOWER GIRL.--_Dickens's Household Words_, 641
THE THREE ERAS OF OTTOMAN HISTORY.--_The Antheneum_, 643
THE CAPTAIN AND THE NEGRO.--_United Service Magazine_, 646
THE VEILED PICTURE: A TRAVELLER'S STORY.--_New Monthly Magazine_, 648
THE SPENDTHRIFT'S DAUGHTER: IN SIX CHAPTERS.--_Household Words_, 664
MY NOVEL: BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. _Continued_, 683
AUTHORS AND BOOKS:
Pendant to Professor Creasy's _Decisive Battles of the
World_, 693.--Correspondence respecting the Thirty Years'
War, 693.--German collection of English Songs, 693.--German
Philologists, 693.--Weil's History of the Califs, 693.--The
Germans in Bohemia, 693.--Andree's Work on America, 694.--Works
on Spinoza, 694.--New Goethean Literature, 694.--The British
Empire in Europe, by Meidinger, 694.--The Play of the
Resurrection, 694.--German History of French Literature,
694.--New work on German Knighthood, &c., 694.--German Romance
in the 18th Century, 695.--Madame Blaze de Bury's New Novel,
695.--Richter's History of the Evangelical German Churches,
695.--German Life of Sir Robert Peel, 695.--Zimmermann on the
English Revolution, 695.--History of Norway, 695.--Reguly,
the Hungarian Traveller, 695.--Political Notabilities of
Hungary, 695.--Speeches, &c., by King William of Prussia,
695.--Pictures from the North, 695.--History of the Swiss
Confederation, 695.--Bern's System of Chronology, by Miss
Peabody, 695.--French Almanacs, 695.--M. Croce-Spinelli's
Work on Popular Government, 696.--Works by the Paris
Asiatic Society, 696.--Cæsar Daly on Parisian Architecture,
696.--Figuier's Modern Discoveries, 696.--The _Annuaire
des Deux Mondes_, 696.--Calvin's Inedited Letters,
697.--Lacretelle, 697.--Critical Studies of Socialism,
697.--Memoirs of Mademoiselle Mars, 697.--The Institute of
France, 697.--Grille, on the War in La Vendée, 697.--History
of the Bourgeoisie of Paris, 697.--_Archives des Missions
Scientifiques_, &c., 697.--Travels in Africa, 698.--Spirit of
New Roman Catholic Literature, 698.--Gardin de Tassy on Mr.
Salisbury's Unpublished Arabic Documents, 699.--New Travels in
Palestine, 698.--The Abbadie Travellers, 699.--French, English,
and American Missionaries, as Scholars, 699.--The Westminster
Review, 690.--A Grandson of Robert Burns, 699.--Friends in
Council, &c., by Mr. Helps, 699.--New English Announcements,
700.--New Dissenters' College, 700.--Sir Charles Lyell, and the
"Free Thinkers," 700.--Professor Wilson, 700.--Miss Kirkland's
Evening Book, 700.--Works by Mrs. Lee, 701.--Mr. Boyd's edition
of Young's Night Thoughts, 702.--"Injustice to the South,"
702.--Splendid American Gift Books for 1852, 703.--New American
Works in Press, 703, &c.
THE FINE ARTS:
Leutze's Washington, 703.--Colossal Statue of Washington at
Munich, 703.--Kaulbach's Frescoes, 703.--Cadame's Compositions
of the Seasons, 703.--Portraits of Bishop White and Daniel
Webster, 703.
HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE MONTH:
The American Elections, 704.--Kossuth In England, 704.--Europe,
and the East, 704.
RECENT DEATHS:
Archibald Alexander. D. D., 705.--J. Kearney Rogers, M. D.,
705.--Rev. William Croswell, D. D., 706.--Granville Sharpe
Pattison, M. D., 706.--Mr. Stephens, author of _The Manuscripts
of Erdely_, 706.--Mr. Gutzlaff, the Missionary, 707.--Don
Manuel Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, 708.--George Baker,
708.--M. De Savigny, 708.--Archbishop Wingard, 708.--Samuel
Beaseley, author of _The Roué_, 708.--H. P. Borrell,
708.--James Tyler. R. D., 708.--Emma Martin, 709.--Yar
Mohammed, 709.--Alexander Lee, 710.--Prince Frederick of
Prussia, 710.
GENTLEMEN'S AND LADIES FASHIONS FOR DECEMBER. _Seven Engravings_, 718
THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
Of Literature, Art, and Science.
* * * * *
Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, DECEMBER 1, 1851. No. V.
NAUVOO AND DESERET.
IMPOSTURE AND HISTORY OF THE MORMONS.
Among the many extraordinary chapters in the history of the Nineteenth
Century none will seem in the next age more incredible and curious than
that in which is related the Rise and Progress of Mormonism. The creed
of the Latter Day Saints, as they style themselves, is not, indeed,
more absurd and ridiculous than that of the Millerites, but this last
sect had but a very brief existence, and is now almost forgotten;
while the imposture of Smith and his associates, commencing before
Miller began his prophecies, is still successful, and represented by
missionaries in almost every state throughout the world.
[Illustration: THE MORMON EXODUS: PASSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.]
It has been observed with some reason, that had a Rabelais or a Swift
told the story of the Mormons under the veil of allegory, the sane
portion of mankind would probably have entered a protest against the
extravagance of the satirist. The name of the mock hero, his own and
his family's ignorance and want of character, the low cunning of his
accomplices, the open and shameless vices in which they indulged, and
the extraordinary success of the sect they founded, would all have been
thought too obviously conceived with a view to ludicrous effects. Yet
the Mormon movement has assumed the condition of an important popular
feature, and after much suffering and many reverses, its authors have
achieved a condition of eminent industrial prosperity. In twenty years
the company, consisting of the impostor and his father and brother,
has increased to nearly half a million; they occupy one of the richest
portions of this continent, have a regularly organized government, and
are represented in the Congress of the United States by a delegate
having all the powers usually conferred on the members for territories.
With missions in every part of the country, in every capital of Europe,
in Mecca, in Jerusalem, and among the islands of the Pacific and the
Indian Oceans, all of whom are charged with the duty of making converts
and gathering them to the Promised Land of Deseret, they must very soon
have a population sufficiently large to claim admission as an equal
member to the Union, and perhaps to hold the balance of power in its
affairs.
To illustrate the energy and success with which their missions are
prosecuted, we may cite the statement contained in a work just
published in London, _The Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, a Contemporary
History_, that more than fourteen thousand persons have left Great
Britain since 1840 for the "Holy City." The emigrants passing through
Liverpool in 1849, amounted to 2,500, generally of the better class
of mechanics and farmers, and it was estimated that at least 30,000
converts remained behind. In June, 1850, there were in England and
Scotland, 27,863, of whom London contributed 2,529; Liverpool, 1,018;
Manchester, 2,787; Glasgow, 1,846; Sheffield, 1,920; Edinburgh, 1,331;
Birmingham, 1,909; and Wales, 4,342. And the Mormon census was again
taken last January, giving the entire number in the British Isles
at 30,747. In fourteen years, more than 50,000 had been baptized in
England, of whom nearly 17,000 had "emigrated to Zion." Although the
Mormon emigration is commonly of the better class, there are also poor
Mormons; and that these as well as their more prosperous brethren may
be "gathered to the holy city," there is now amassed in Liverpool
a very large fund, under the control of officers appointed by the
"Apostles," destined exclusively for the equipment and transportation
of converts to their place of Refuge.
The interest which recent events have attracted to the community in
Deseret or Utah, will render interesting a more particular survey of
its origin, progress, and condition.
In 1825 there lived near the village of Palmyra, in New-York, a family
of small farmers of the name of Smith. They were of bad repute in the
neighborhood, notorious for being continually in debt, and heedless of
their business engagements. The eldest son, Joseph, says one of his
friends, "could read without much difficulty, wrote a very imperfect
hand, and had a very limited understanding of the elementary rules of
arithmetic." Associated in some degree with Sidney Rigdon, who comes
before us in the first place as a journeyman printer, he was the
founder of the new faith. The early history of the conspiracy of these
worthies is imperfectly known; but it is evident that Rigdon must have
been in Smith's confidence from the first. Rigdon, indeed, probably
had more to do with the matter than even Smith; but it was the latter
who was first put conspicuously forward, and who managed to retain
the pre-eminence. The account of the pretended revelation, as given
by Smith, is as follows: He all at once found himself laboring in a
state of great darkness and wretchedness of mind--was bewildered among
the conflicting doctrines of the Christians, and could find no comfort
or rest for his soul. In this state, he resorted to earnest prayer,
kneeling in the woods and fields, and after long perseverance was
answered by the appearance of a bright light in heaven, which gradually
descended until it enveloped the worshipper, who found himself standing
face to face with two supernatural beings. Of these he inquired which
was the true religion? The reply was, that all existing religions
were erroneous, but that the pure doctrine and crowning dispensation
of Christianity should at a future period be miraculously revealed
to himself. Several similar visitations ensued, and at length he was
informed that the North American Indians were a remnant of Israel; that
when they first entered America they were a powerful and enlightened
people; that their priests and rulers kept the records of their history
and doctrines, but that, having fallen off from the true worship, the
great body of the nation were supernaturally destroyed--not, however,
until a priest and prophet named Mormon, had, by heavenly direction,
drawn up an abstract of their records and religious opinions. He was
told that this still existed, buried in the earth, and that he was
selected as the instrument for its recovery and manifestation to all
nations. The record, it was said, contained many prophecies as to these
latter days, and instructions for the gathering of the saints into a
temporal and spiritual kingdom, preparatory to the second coming of
the Messiah, which was at hand. After several very similar visions,
the spot in which the book lay buried was disclosed. Smith went to
it, and after digging, discovered a sort of box, formed of upright and
horizontal flags, within which lay a number of plates resembling gold,
and of the thickness of common tin. These were bound together by a
wire, and were engraved with Egyptian characters. By the side of them
lay two transparent stones, called by the ancients, "Urim and Thummim,"
set in "the two rims of a bow." These stones were divining crystals,
and the angels informed Smith, that by using them he would be enabled
to decipher the characters on the plates. What ultimately became of the
plates--if such things existed at all--does not appear. They were said
to have been seen and handled by eleven witnesses. With the exception
of three persons, these witnesses were either members of Smith's
family, or of a neighboring family of the name of Whitmer. The Smiths,
of course, give suspicious testimony. The Whitmers have disappeared,
and no one knows any thing about them. Another witness, Oliver Cowdrey,
was afterwards an amanuensis to Joseph; and another, Martin Harris, was
long a conspicuous disciple. There is some confusion, however, about
this person. Although he signs his name, as a witness who has seen and
handled the plates, he assured Professor Anthon that he never had seen
them, that "he was not sufficiently pure of heart," and that Joseph
refused to show him the plates, but gave him instead a transcript on
paper of the characters engraved on them. It is difficult to trace the
early advances of the imposture. Every thing is vague and uncertain. We
have no dates, and only the statements of the prophet and his friends.
Meantime, Smith must have worked successfully on the feeble and
superstitious mind of Martin Harris. This man, as we have just said,
received from him a written transcript of the mysterious characters,
and conveyed it to Professor Anthon, a competent philological
authority. Dr. Anthon's account of the interview is one of the most
important parts of the entire history. Harris told him he had not seen
the plates, but that he intended to sell his farm and give the proceeds
to enable Smith to publish a translation of them. This statement,
with what follows, shows that Smith's original intention, _quoad_ the
alleged plates, was to use them as a means for swindling Harris. The
Mormons have published accounts of Professor Anthon's judgment on
the paper submitted to him, which he himself states to be "perfectly
false." The Mormon version of the interview represents Dr. Anthon
"as having been unable to decipher the characters correctly, but as
having presumed that, if the original records could be brought, he
could assist in translating them." On this statement being made, Dr.
Anthon described the document submitted to him as having been a sort
of _pot-pourri_ of ancient marks and alphabets. "It had evidently been
prepared by some person who had before him a book containing various
alphabets; Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman
letters, inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular
columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle,
divided into various compartments, decked with numerous strange marks,
and evidently copied after the Mexican Calendar given by Humboldt,
but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was
derived." This account disposes of the statement that the characters
were Egyptian, while the very jumble of the signs of different nations,
languages, and ages, proves that the impostor was deficient both in
tact and knowledge. The scheme seems to have been, at all events, _in
petto_ when Smith communicated with Harris; but a satisfactory clue to
the fabrication is lost in our ignorance of the time and circumstances
under which Smith and Rigdon came together. It must have been
subsequent to that event that the "translation," by means of the magic
Urim and Thummim, was begun. This work Smith is represented as having
labored at steadily, assisted by Oliver Cowdrey, until a volume was
produced containing as much matter as the Old Testament, written in the
Biblical style, and containing, as Smith said the Angel had informed
him, a history of the lost tribes in their pilgrimage to and settlement
in America, with copious doctrinal and prophetic commentaries and
revelations.
The devotion of Harris to the impostor secured a fund sufficient for
defraying the cost of printing the pretended revelation, and the sect
began slowly to increase. The doctrines of Smith were not at first
very clearly defined; it is probable that neither he nor Rigdon had
determined what should be their precise character; but like their early
contemporary the prophet Matthias (the interesting history of whose
career was published in New-York several years ago by the late Colonel
Stone), they had no hesitation in deciding on one cardinal point,
that the revelations made to Smith at any time should be received
with unquestioning and implicit faith, and the earliest of these
revelations contemplated a liberal provision for all the prophet's
personal necessities. Thus, in February, 1831, it was revealed to the
disciples that they should immediately build the prophet a house; on
another occasion it was enjoined that, if they had any regard for
their own souls, the sooner they provided him with food and raiment,
and every thing he needed, the better it would be for them; and in a
third revelation, Joseph was informed that "he was not to labor for his
living." All these "revelations" were received, and though the impostor
seemed to intelligent men little better than a buffoon, his followers
soon learned to regard him as almost deserving of adoration, and he
began to revel in whatever luxury and profligacy was most agreeable
to his vulgar taste and ambition. As in the case of the scarcely more
respectable pretender, Andrew Jackson Davis, it was asserted that
his original want of cultivation precluded the notion of his having
by the exercise of any natural or acquired faculties produced his
"revelations." Everywhere his followers said, "The prophet is not
learned in a human sense: how could he have become acquainted with all
the antiquarian learning here displayed, if it were not supernaturally
communicated to him?" But to this question there was soon an answer
equally explicit and satisfactory. The real author of the Book of
Mormon was a Rev. Solomon Spaulding, who wrote it as a romance. Its
entire history and the means by which it came into the possession of
Smith are described, in the following statement, by Mr. Spaulding's
widow:--
[Illustration: CROSSING THE MISSOURI.]
"Since the _Book of Mormon_, or _Golden Bible_ (as it was
originally called), has excited much attention, and is deemed
by a certain new sect of equal authority with the sacred
Scriptures, I think it a duty to the public to state what I
know of its origin.... Solomon Spaulding, to whom I was married
in early life, was a graduate of Dartmouth college, and was
distinguished for a lively imagination, and great fondness for
history. At the time of our marriage, he resided in Cherry
Valley, New York. From this place, we removed to New Salem,
Ashtabula County, Ohio, sometimes called Conneaut, as it is
situated on Conneaut Creek. Shortly after our removal to this
place, his health failed, and he was laid aside from active
labors. In the town of New Salem there are numerous mounds and
forts, supposed by many to be the dilapidated dwellings and
fortifications of a race now extinct. These relics arrest the
attention of new settlers, and become objects of research for
the curious. Numerous implements were found, and other articles
evincing skill in the arts. Mr. Spaulding being an educated
man, took a lively interest in these developments of antiquity;
and in order to beguile the hours of retirement, and furnish
employment for his mind, he conceived the idea of giving an
historical sketch of the long-lost race. Their antiquity led
him to adopt the most ancient style, and he imitated the Old
Testament as nearly as possible. His sole object in writing
this imaginary history was to amuse himself and his neighbors.
This was about the year 1812. Hull's surrender at Detroit
occurred near the same time, and I recollect the date well
from that circumstance. As he progressed in his narrative, the
neighbors would come in from time to time to hear portions
read, and a great interest in the work was excited among them.
It claimed to have been written by one of the lost nation, and
to have been recovered from the earth; and he gave it the title
of 'The Manuscript Found.' The neighbors would often inquire
how Mr. Spaulding advanced in deciphering the manuscript; and
when he had a sufficient portion prepared, he would inform
them, and they would assemble to hear it read. He was enabled,
from his acquaintance with the classics and ancient history,
to introduce many singular names, which were particularly
noticed by the people, and could be easily recognized by them.
Mr. Solomon Spaulding had a brother, Mr. John Spaulding,
residing in the place at the time, who was perfectly familiar
with the work, and repeatedly heard the whole of it. From
New Salem we removed to Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania. Here
Mr. Spaulding found a friend and acquaintance, in the person
of Mr. Patterson, an editor of a newspaper. He exhibited his
manuscript to Mr. Patterson, who was much pleased with it,
and borrowed it for perusal. He retained it a long time, and
informed Mr. Spaulding that if he would make out a title-page
and preface, he would publish it, and it might be a source
of profit. This Mr. Spaulding refused to do. Sidney Rigdon,
who has figured so largely in the history of the Mormons,
was at that time connected with the printing office of Mr.
Patterson, as is well known in that region, and, as Rigdon
himself has frequently stated, became acquainted with Mr.
Spaulding's manuscript, and copied it. It was a matter of
notoriety and interest to all connected with the printing
establishment. At length the manuscript was returned to its
author, and soon after we removed to Amity, Washington county,
where Mr. Spaulding died, in 1816. The manuscript then fell
into my hands, and was carefully preserved. It has frequently
been examined by my daughter, Mrs. M'Kenstry, of Monson,
Massachusetts, with whom I now reside, and by other friends.
After the Book of Mormon came out, a copy of it was taken to
New Salem, the place of Mr. Spaulding's former residence,
and the very place where the 'Manuscript Found' was written.
A woman appointed a meeting there; and in the meeting read
copious extracts from the Book of Mormon. The historical part
was known by all the older inhabitants, as the identical
work of Mr. Spaulding, in which they had all been so deeply
interested years before. Mr. John Spaulding was present, and
recognized perfectly the production of his brother. He was
amazed and afflicted that it should have been perverted to so
wicked a purpose. His grief found vent in tears, and he arose
on the spot, and expressed to the meeting his sorrow that the
writings of his deceased brother should be used for a purpose
so vile and shocking. The excitement in New Salem became so
great, that the inhabitants had a meeting, and deputed Dr.
Philastus Hurlbut, one of their number, to repair to this
place, and to obtain from me the original manuscript of Mr.
Spaulding, for the purpose of comparing it with the Mormon
Bible--to satisfy their own minds and to prevent their friends
from embracing an error so delusive. This was in the year 1834.
Dr. Hurlbut brought with him an introduction and request for
the manuscript, which was signed by Messrs. Henry, Lake, Aaron
Wright, and others, with all of whom I was acquainted, as they
were my neighbors when I resided at New Salem. I am sure that
nothing would grieve my husband more, were he living, than
the use which has been made of his work. The air of antiquity
which was thrown about the composition doubtless suggested
the idea of converting it to the purposes of delusion. Thus,
an historical romance, with the addition of a few pious
expressions, and extracts from the sacred Scriptures, has been
construed into a new Bible, and palmed off upon a company of
poor deluded fanatics as Divine."
Similar evidence as to the Spaulding MS. was given by several private
friends, and by the writer's brother, all of whom were familiar with
its contents. The facts thus graphically detailed have of course been
denied, but have never been disproved. Indeed, without them it is
impossible to explain the hold which Rigdon always possessed on the
Prophet; for he was a poor creature, without education and without
talents. At one time--a critical moment in the history of the new
church--a quarrel arose between the accomplices; but it ended in
Smith's receiving a "revelation," in which Rigdon was raised by divine
command to be equal with himself, having plenary power given to him to
bind and loose both on earth and in heaven.
[Illustration: A MORMON CARAVAN ON THE PRAIRIES.]
The remaining history of the Mormons is eminently interesting. Ignorant
and superstitious as have been the chief part of the disciples, and
atrocious as have been the tricks of the knaves who have led them on
amid all the varieties of their good and evil fortune, there have
occasionally been displayed among them an enthusiasm and bravery of
endurance that demand admiration. Nearly from the beginning the leaders
of the sect seem to have contemplated settling in the thinly populated
regions of the western states, where lands were to be purchased for
low prices, and after a short residence at Kirkland, in Ohio, they
determined to found a New Jerusalem in Missouri. The interests of the
town were confided to suitable officers, and Smith spent his time
in travelling through the country and preaching, until the real or
pretended immoralities of the sect led to such discontents that in
1839 they were forcibly and lawlessly expelled from the state. We are
inclined to believe that they were not only treated with remarkable
severity, but that there was not any reason whatever to justify an
interference in their affairs.
[Illustration: THE MORMON TEMPLE AT NAUVOO.]
From Missouri the saints proceeded to Illinois, and on the sixth of
April, 1841, with imposing ceremonies, laid at their new city of Nauvoo
the corner-stone of the Temple,[1] an immense edifice, without any
architectural order or attraction, which in a few months was celebrated
every where as not inferior in size and magnificence to that built by
Solomon in Jerusalem. Nauvoo is delightfully situated in the midst of
a fertile district, and a careful inquirer will not be apt to deny
that it became the home of a more industrious, frugal, and generally
moral society, than occupied any other town in the state. Whatever
charges were preferred against Smith and his disciples, to justify the
outrages to which they were subjected, the history of their expulsion
from Nauvoo is simply a series of illustrations of the fact that the
ruffian population of the neighboring country set on foot a vast scheme
of robbery in order to obtain the lands and improvements of the Mormons
without paying for them. We have not room for a particular statement
of the discontents and conspiracies which grew up in the city, nor
for any detail of the aggressions from without. On the 27th of June,
1844, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered, while under the especial
protection of the authorities of the state. A writer in the _Christian
Reflector_ newspaper, soon after, observed of Joseph Smith:
"Various are the opinions concerning this singular personage;
but whatever may be thought in reference to his principles,
objects, or moral character, all agree that he was a most
remarkable man.... Notwithstanding the low origin, poverty,
and profligacy of these mountebanks, they have augmented
their numbers till more than 100,000 persons are now numbered
among the followers of the Mormon Prophet, and they never
were increasing so rapidly as at the time of his death. Born
in the very lowest walks of life, reared in poverty, educated
in vice, having no claims to even common intelligence, coarse
and vulgar in deportment, the Prophet Smith succeeded in
establishing a religious creed, the tenets of which have been
taught throughout America; the Prophet's virtues have been
rehearsed in Europe; the ministers of Nauvoo have found a
welcome in Asia; Africa has listened to the grave sayings of
the seer of Palmyra; the standard of the Latter-Day Saints
has been reared on the banks of the Nile; and even the Holy
Land has been entered by the emissaries of this impostor. He
founded a city in one of the most beautiful situations in the
world, in a beautiful curve of the 'Father of Waters,' of no
mean pretensions, and in it he had collected a population
of twenty-five thousand, from every part of the world. The
acts of his life exhibit a character as incongruous as it is
remarkable. If we can credit his own words and the testimony
of eye-witnesses, he was at the same time the vicegerent of
God and a tavern-keeper--a prophet and a base libertine--a
minister of peace, and a lieutenant-general--a ruler of tens of
thousands, and a slave to all his own base passions--a preacher
of righteousness, and a profane swearer--a worshipper of
Bacchus, mayor of a city, and a miserable bar-room fiddler--a
judge on the judicial bench, and an invader of the civil,
social, and moral relations of men; and, notwithstanding
these inconsistencies of character, there are not wanting
thousands willing to stake their souls' eternal salvation
on his veracity. For aught we know, time and distance will
embellish his life with some new and rare virtues, which his
most intimate friends failed to discover while living with
him. Reasoning from effect to cause, we must conclude that
the Mormon Prophet was of no common genius: few are able to
commence and carry out an imposition like his, so long, and so
extensively. And we see, in the history of his success, most
striking proofs of the credulity of a large portion of the
human family."
[1] The temple was of white limestone, 128 feet long, 83 feet wide, and
60 feet high. Its style will be seen in the above engraving. It was
destroyed by fire, on the 19th of November, 1848. The town of Nauvoo
is now occupied by another class of socialists, the Icarians, under M.
Cabet, of Paris.
[Illustration: THE EXPULSION FROM NAUVOO.]
After some dissensions, in which the party of Brigham Young triumphed
over that of Sidney Rigdon, the sect were reorganized and for some time
were permitted quietly to prosecute their plans at Nauvoo. But early in
1846 they were driven out of their city and compelled in mid winter to
seek a new home beyond the farthest borders of civilization. The first
companies, embracing sixteen hundred persons, crossed the Mississippi
on the 3d February, 1846, and similar detachments continued to leave
until July and August, travelling by ox-teams towards California,
then almost unknown, and quite unpeopled by the Anglo-Saxon race.
Their enemies asserted that the intention of the Saints was to excite
the Indians against the government, and that they would return to
take vengeance on the whites for the indignities they had suffered.
Nothing appears to have been further from their intentions. Their
sole object was to plant their Church in some fertile and hitherto
undiscovered spot, where they might be unmolested by any opposing sect.
The war against Mexico was then raging, and, to test the loyalty of
the Mormons, it was suggested that a demand should be made on them to
raise five hundred men for the service of the country. They consented,
and that number of their best men enrolled themselves under General
Kearney, and marched 2,400 miles with the armies of the United States.
At the conclusion of the war they were disbanded in Upper California.
They allege that it was one of this band who, in working at a mill,
first discovered the golden treasures of California; and they are said
to have amassed large quantities of gold before the secret was made
generally known to the "Gentiles." But faith was not kept with the
Mormons who remained in Nauvoo. Although they had agreed to leave in
detachments, as rapidly as practicable, they were not allowed necessary
time to dispose of their property; and in September, 1846, the city
was besieged by their enemies upon the pretence that they did not
intend to fulfil the stipulations made with the people and authorities
of Illinois. After a three days' bombardment, the last remnant was
finally driven out.
The terrible hejira of the Mormon emigrants over the Rocky Mountains
has been described by Mr. Kane of Philadelphia, in an interesting
pamphlet, which is honorable to his own character for good sense and
for benevolent feeling. No religious emigration was ever attended
by more suffering, no emigration of any kind was ever prosecuted
with more bravery. It resulted in the permanent establishment of the
"Commonwealth of the New Covenant," in Utah, or Deseret, one of the
most attractive portions of the interior of this Continent, near its
western border. Of this territory Mr. Kane says:
Deseret is emphatically a new country; new in its own
characteristic features, newer still in its bringing together
within its limits the most inconsistent peculiarities of
other countries. I cannot aptly compare it to any. Descend
from the mountains, where you have the scenery and climate of
Switzerland, to seek the sky of your choice among the many
climates of Italy, and you may find welling out of the same
hills the freezing springs of Mexico and the hot springs of
Iceland, both together coursing their way to the Salt Sea
of Palestine, in the plain below. The pages of Malte Brun
provide me with a less truthful parallel to it than those which
describe the Happy Valley of Rasselas, or the Continent of
Ballibarbi.
[Illustration: GREAT SALT LAKE CITY OR NEW JERUSAL'M.]
The history of the Mormons has ever since been an unbroken record
of prosperity. It has looked as though the elements of fortune,
obedient to a law of natural re-action, were struggling to compensate
their undue share of suffering. They may be pardoned for deeming it
miraculous. But, in truth, the economist accounts for it all, who
explains to us the speedy recuperation of cities, laid in ruin by
flood, fire, and earthquake. During its years of trial, Mormon labor
had subsisted on insufficient capital, and under many difficulties,
but it _has_ subsisted, and survives them now, as intelligent and
powerful as ever it was at Nauvoo; with this difference, that it has
in the mean time been educated to habits of unmatched thrift, energy,
and endurance, and has been transplanted to a situation where it is
in every respect more productive. Moreover, during all the period of
their journey, while some have gained by practice in handicraft, and
the experience of repeated essays at their various halting-places,
the minds of all have been busy framing designs and planning the
improvements they have since found opportunity to execute. Their
territory is unequalled as a stock-raising country; the finest pastures
of Lombardy are not more estimable than those on the east side of the
Utah Lake and its tributary rivers, and it is scarcely less rich in
timber and minerals than the most fortunate portions of the continent.
From the first the Mormons have had little to do in Deseret, but attend
to mechanical and strictly agricultural pursuits. They have made
several successful settlements; the farthest north is distant more than
forty miles, and the farthest south, in a valley called the Sanpeech,
two hundred, from that first formed. A duplicate of the Lake Tiberias
empties its waters into the innocent Dead Sea of Deseret, by a fine
river, which they have named the Western Jordan. It was on the right
bank of this stream, on a rich table land, traversed by exhaustless
waters falling from the highlands, that the pioneers, coming out of the
mountains in the night of the 24th of July, 1847, pitched their first
camp in the Valley, and consecrated the ground. This spot proved the
most favorable site for their chief settlement, and after exploring
the whole country, they founded on it their city of the New Jerusalem.
Its houses are diffused, to command as much as possible the farms,
which are laid out in wards or cantons, with a common fence to each.
The farms in wheat already cover a space nearly as large as Rhode
Island. The houses of New Jerusalem, or Great Salt Lake City, as it is
commonly called, are distributed over an area nearly as great as that
of New York. The foundations have been laid for a temple more vast
and magnificent than that which was erected at Nauvoo. The Deseret
News, a paper established under the direction of the ecclesiastical
authority came to us lately with several columns descriptive of the
fourth anniversary celebration of the arrival of the disciples in their
Promised Land.
Since the preceding paragraphs were written some important information
has been received from Utah, justifying apprehensions that the ambition
of the chief of the sect, and territorial governor, Brigham Young,
will be continually productive of difficulties. It appears that in
consequence of his unwarrantable assumptions of authority, the larger
and most respectable portion of the territorial officers, including
B. O. Harris, Secretary of the Territory, G. K. Brandenburg, Chief
Justice, E. P. Bracchas, Associate Justice, H. R. Day, Indian Agent,
and Messrs. Gillette and Young, were preparing to leave for the
Atlantic States.
The particulars of the difficulty are not stated, but it is said that
$20,000 appropriated by Congress for territorial purposes had been
squandered by Young, and an attempt made by him to take $24,000 from
the Treasurer, who refused, and applied to the Court to support him.
This was done, and an injunction granted restraining the proceedings of
the Governor.
[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE.]
Of the numerous objects of interest with which the banks of the Thames
are so thickly studded, none are of such surpassing grandeur and regal
magnificence as Windsor Castle, with its adjacent chapel of St. George,
and Eton College. This massive and stately pile is richly storied
with poetic associations, and venerable for its antiquity, in having
proudly defied the ravages of Time for some eight centuries. Here
kings were born; here they kept royal state amid the blaze of fashion
and luxurious indulgence; and here in the adjoining mausoleum, they
were buried. Here deeds of chivalry and high renown that shine on
us from ancient days were enacted; and it is here the most exemplary
of England's monarchy still prefers to hold her suburban residence.
This brave old fortress, unlike the Tower of London, with its dark
records of crime, is rife with pleasant memories. Not only is the
edifice itself, with its gigantic towers, its broad bastions, and its
kingly halls, sacred with incident and story, but Shakespeare has also
rendered classical the very ground on which it stands.
[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF WINDSOR CASTLE.]
Windsor Forest, with its magnificent old oaks and its richly variegated
scenery, of "upland, lawn and stream," has afforded a fruitful theme
for the pens of Gray and the poet of "The Seasons;" and Pope, it will
be remembered, has felicitously pictured forth its changeful beauties.
As far back as the days of the Saxons we have records of palatial
residence at Old Windsor, or as its name then was, _Windleshora_, so
called from the windings of the Thames in its vicinity. William the
Norman built some portions of the Castle, which, until the time of
Richard I., seems ever to have been the peaceful abode of royalty.
During the civil wars, of which Windsor was a principal scene, the
Castle became the most important military establishment in the kingdom.
The sanguinary struggles connected with the signing of _Magna Charta_,
are familiar to the reader. The birth of Edward III., which took place
at Windsor, forms another epoch in its history--that prince having
reconstructed the greater part of the Castle, and very largely extended
it. William of Wykeham was the architect, with the liberal salary of a
shilling a day. It is said he and six hundred workmen employed on the
building, at the rate of one penny a day. It was here Richard II. heard
the appeal of high treason, brought by the Duke of Lancaster against
Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, which resulted in the former becoming Henry
IV. It was here the Earl of Surrey, imprisoned for the high crime of
eating flesh in Lent, beguiled his solitude, with his muse; and here
was the last prison of that unfortunate monarch, Charles I. In Windsor
Castle also resided the haughty Elizabeth; and along its terrace might
have been seen in the days of the Commonwealth the stern figure of the
lion-hearted Cromwell. It was the residence of Henry VIII., and the
prison of James I. of Scotland. It is indebted for most of its modern
splendor, to the luxurious taste and prodigal expenditure of George
IV., who obtained from the House of Commons the sum of £300,000 for
the purpose. The suites of royal apartments at present in use by the
Queen are superb in the extreme, especially the state drawing rooms, in
which are nine pictures by Zuccarelli; and St. George's Hall--a vast
apartment in which the state banquets are given.
The long walk, extending about three miles in a direct line to the
Palace, presents the finest vista of its kind in the world. It extends
from the grand entrance of the Castle, to the top of a commanding
hill in the Great Park, which affords a panoramic view of enchanting
beauty, including many places memorable in history. On the right is
the Thames, seen beyond Charter Island, and the plain of Runnymede,
where the Barons extorted _Magna Charta_, whilst in the hazy distance
are the rising eminences of Harrow and Hampstead. On the summit of this
hill stands the equestrian statue of George III. Near the avenue called
Queen Elizabeth's Walk, tradition still points out a withered tree as
the identical oak of "Herne the Hunter," who, as the tale goes,
"Sometimes a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round the oak, with great ragged horns."
[We derive this article from an interesting and beautifully
illustrated volume of "Memories of the Great Metropolis," by
FREDERIC SAUNDERS, to be issued in a few days by one of our
leading publishers. We shall notice it again.]
MR. GERARD, THE LION KILLER, AND M. LE BARON MUNCHAUSEN, WHO BEAT HIM.
Jules Gerard is an officer in the famous army of Africa, who has a
passion for lion killing. He is the Gordon Cumming of France. He
follows lions alone; hunts them like sheep, for miles; sleeps near
them; and patiently awaits their coming. Last year we published
(article "Wild Sports in Algeria," _International_, vol. ii. p. 121,)
an account of one of his exploits, to which he now refers us. His last
adventure is sufficiently exciting, and incredibly daring. It is told
in a letter to a friend, and published in the _Journal des Chasseurs_:--
"My dear Léon,--In my narrative of the month of August, 1850,
I spoke of a large old lion which I had not been able to fall
in with, and of whose sex and age I had formed a notion from
his roarings. On the return of the expeditionary column from
Kabylia, I asked permission from General St. Armand to go and
explore the fine lairs situated on the northern declivity of
Mount Aures, in the environs of Klenchela, where I had left
my animal. Instead of a furlough, I received a mission for
that country, and accordingly had during two months to shut
my ears against the daily reports that were brought to me by
the Arabs of the misdeeds of the solitary. In the beginning of
September, when my mission was terminated, I proceeded to pitch
my tent in the midst of the district haunted by the lion, and
set about my investigations round about the _douars_ to which
he paid the most frequent visits. In this manner I spent many
a night beneath the open sky, without any satisfactory result,
when, on the 15th, in the morning, after a heavy rain which
had lasted till midnight, some natives, who had explored the
cover, came and informed me that the lion was ensconced within
half a league of my tent. I set out at three o'clock, taking
with me an Arab to hold my horse, another carrying my arms,
and a third in charge of a goat most decidedly unconscious of
the important part it was about to perform. Having alighted
at the skirt of the wood, I directed myself towards a glade
situated in the midst of the haunt, where I found a shrub to
which I could tie the goat, and a tuft or two to sit upon. The
Arabs went and crouched down beneath the cover, at a distance
of about 100 paces. I had been there about a quarter of an
hour, the goat meanwhile bleating with all its might, when a
covey of partridges got up behind me, uttering their usual
cry when surprised. I looked about me in every direction,
but could see nothing. Meanwhile the goat had ceased crying,
and its eyes were intently fixed at me. She made an attempt
to break away from the fastening, and then began trembling
in all her limbs. At these symptoms of fright I again turned
round, and perceived behind me, about fifteen paces off, the
lion stretched out at the foot of a juniper-tree, through the
branches of which he was surveying us and making wry faces. In
the position I was in, it was impossible for me to fire without
facing about. I tried to fire from the left shoulder but felt
awkward. In turning gently round without rising, I was in a
favorable position, and just as I was levelling my piece the
lion stood up and began to show me all his teeth, at the same
time shaking his head, as much as to say, 'What the devil are
you doing there?' I did not hesitate a moment, and fired at his
mouth. The animal fell on the spot as if struck by lightning.
My men ran up at the shot; and as they were eager to lay hands
on the lion, I fired a second time between the eyes, in order
to secure his lying perfectly still. The first bullet had taken
the course of the spine throughout its entire length, passing
through the marrow, and had come out at the tail. I had never
before fired a shot that penetrated so deeply, and yet I had
only loaded with sixty grains. It is true the rifle was one of
Devisme's and the bullets steel-pointed. The lion, a black one
and among the oldest I have ever shot, supplied the kettles of
four companies of infantry who were stationed at Klenchela.
Receive, my dear Léon, the assurance of my devoted affection.
JULES GERARD."
The exploit of 1850 was the chasing of two lions, one of which he
killed; the other, supposed to be the one now shot, running away from
him and escaping, after a vigorous chase of many miles. Some one--a
celebrated author, indeed, with whose astonishing adventures we have
been familiar from boyhood--envious of the recent fame of Mr. Arthur
Gordon Cumming and M. Jules Gerard, has sent the following letter to
the editor of the London _Times_:
Sir,--The exploit of M. Jules Gerard, recorded in _The Times_
of the 14th inst., is certainly very wonderful, but by no means
equals one performed by myself in South Africa. Observing on
one occasion a large black lion, about 18 feet in length,
reposing under a caoutchouc tree, I fired, and the bullet, like
that of M. Gerard, went right through the backbone and came
out at the tail; but, wonderful to relate, it hit against the
tree, and rebounding, came back the same way and went straight
into the barrel of my rifle, just after I had reloaded with
powder. I instantly presented my piece at the lioness, which
was reposing by the side of her lord, and fired; and thus I
killed two animals (so large that they supplied three regiments
of the line and 200 irregular cavalry with food for nearly a
week) with one and the same bullet. In case any of your readers
should doubt the truth of this statement, I eschew the usual
fashion of writing under a false name, and subscribe myself,
your very obedient servant,
BARON MUNCHAUSEN.
_London_, Oct. 15.
[Illustration: WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.]
We present to the readers of the _International Magazine_, this month,
from a recent Daguerrotype by Brady, the best portrait ever published
of the greatest living poet who writes the English language.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born on the third of November, 1794, in
the village of Cummington, Massachusetts. His father, Dr. Peter
Bryant of that place, one of the most eminent physicians of the day,
was possessed of extensive literary and scientific acquirements, an
unusually vigorous and well-disciplined mind, and an elegant and
refined taste. He was fond of study, and sought to infuse into the
minds of his young and growing family, those habits of intellectual
exertion which had been to himself a source of so much exalted
pleasure. It was fortunate for the subject of this notice, that such
was his character; for when his own genius began to discover signs
of its power, he found in his father an able and skilful instructor,
who chastened, improved, and encouraged the first rude efforts of
his boyhood. That parent did not, like the father of Petrarch, burn
the poetic library of his son, amid the tears and groans of the boy;
nor, like the relatives of Alfieri, suppress, for nearly one-third
of his existence, the poetic fervor which consumed his heart; but,
looking upon poetry as a high, perhaps the highest of arts, and poetic
eminence as the noblest fame, he nourished with cheerful care the least
indications of its presence, and supplied the youth with the means of
its culture and growth. Nor were his services unrewarded, as it appears
from Mr. Bryant's solemn Hymn to Death, by the subsequent gratitude and
success of his pupil.
When only ten years of age, Mr. Bryant produced several small poems,
which, though of course marked by the defects and puerilities of so
immature an age, were yet thought to possess sufficient merit to be
published in the newspaper of a neighboring village--the Hampshire
Gazette. His friends, though pleased with these early evidences of
talent, did not injure him with injudicious flattery, but, in the
spirit of Dryden's simile, treated them
"As those who unripe veins in mines explore,
On the rich bed again the warm turf lay,
Till time digests the yet imperfect ore,
Knowing it would be gold another day."
Mr. Bryant acquired the rudiments of his school education under the
care, first of the Rev. Mr. Snell of Brookfield, and then under
that of the Rev. Mr. Hallock of Plainfield, Massachusetts. They
found in him a sprightly and intelligent pupil, better pleased to
lay up knowledge from books, and the silent meditation of nature,
than to join in the ordinary pastimes of children. He was quick of
apprehension, and diligent in pursuit. He rapidly ran through the
usual preliminary studies; and in 1810, then in the sixteenth year
of his age, was entered a member of the sophomore class of Williams'
College. In that institution, he continued his studies with the same
ardor and enthusiasm. He was particularly noted for his fondness for
the classics, and in a little while made himself master of the more
interesting portions of the literature of Greece and Rome. But he
had not been in college more than a year or two, when he asked and
procured an honorable dismission, for the purpose of devoting himself
to the study of the law. This he did in the office of Judge Howe of
Worthington, and afterwards in that of the Hon. William Baylies of
Bridgewater, and, in 1815, was admitted to practice at the bar of
Plymouth.
But, during the period of his studies, Mr. Bryant had not neglected
the cultivation of his poetic abilities. In 1808, before he went to
college, he had published, in Boston, a satirical poem, which attracted
so much attention, that a second edition was demanded in the course of
the next year. "When it is remembered," observes Mr. Leggett, "that
this work was given to the public by an author who had not completed
his fourteenth year, it cannot but be considered a remarkable instance
of early maturity of mind. Pope's Ode to Solitude was written at twelve
years of age; but it possesses neither fancy nor feeling, and except
for the harmony of its versification, is entitled to no particular
praise. His Translation of Sappho to Phaon is indeed an extraordinary
production, and has uniformly received the warmest commendation from
the critics. Yet, it is but a translation, while the poem of our
author, written still earlier in life, is an original effort, and as
such cannot but be received with greater surprise, on account of the
wonderful precocity of judgment, wit, and fancy it exhibits. Like
Cowley's Poetical Blossoms, it must have been composed when the writer
was little more than thirteen; but in point of merit, it is decidedly
superior to these effusions of unripened genius." Certain political
strictures on Mr. Jefferson and his party, which this poem contained,
have given rise, since Mr. Bryant has become conspicuous as an ardent
friend of democracy, to charges of political inconsistency and
faithlessness. They are charges, however, that require no refutation;
and we refer to them now only to remark, that it is a singular evidence
of Mr. Bryant's integrity and discernment, that the only point of
attack which embittered enemies have found in his whole life, are his
unconsidered mutterings when a stripling of only thirteen, living in
times of high political excitement, and among a people who were all of
one way of thinking. How few pass through life with characters so pure
and unassailable!
But what chiefly contributed to give Mr. Bryant rank as a poet, was
the publication, in the North American Review of 1816, of the poem of
Thanatopsis, written four years before, in 1812. That a young man, not
yet nineteen, should have produced a poem so lofty in conception, and
so beautiful in execution, so full of chaste language, and delicate and
striking imagery--and above all, so pervaded by a noble and cheerful
religious philosophy--may well be regarded as one of the most wonderful
events of literary history. And the wonder is increased when we learn,
that this sublime lyric was followed, in the course of the few next
years, by the "Inscription for an Entrance into a Wood," written in
1813, and published in the North American in 1817; by the "Waterfowl,"
written in in 1816, and published in 1818; and by the "Fragment of
Simonides," written in 1811, and published in 1818. In 1821, he wrote
his largest poem, "The Ages," which was delivered before the Phi Beta
Kappa Society of Harvard College, and soon after published at Boston,
in a small volume, in connection with the poems we have already
mentioned, and some others. The appearance of this volume at once
established the fame of Mr. Bryant as a poet.
In the same year Mr. Bryant married a young and amiable lady, Miss
Fairchild, of Great Barrington, Mass., whither he had removed to
prosecute his profession. He was both skilful and successful as a
lawyer, but the labor of the vocation clashing with his poetic and
moral sensibilities, induced him, after a ten years' practice, to
remove, in 1825, to the city of New-York, to commence a career of
literary effort. His fame, which had preceded him, soon procured
him the editorship of the New-York Review, which he managed, in
connection with other gentlemen, with great industry and talent. About
the same time he joined Mr. Gulian C. Verplanck, Mr. Robert Sands,
and Fitz-Greene Halleck, and several young artists of the city, in
the production of an Annual called "The Talisman," which for beauty
and variety of contents, has not been surpassed, even in these more
prolific days of Annuals. Some of Mr. Bryant's contributions to
it place him as a prose writer beside the best of any nation. The
narrative of the "Whirlwind," for accurate description, condensed
energy and eloquence of expression, and touching incident, has always
struck us as one of the master-pieces of writing.
In 1827, Mr. Bryant became an editor of the New-York Evening Post,
and since then, with the exception of the years 1834 and '49, when
he travelled with his family in Europe, has had the almost exclusive
control of that journal. It is by his conduct in this capacity, that he
has acquired his standing as a politician.
We have cause, then, to speak of Mr. Bryant's political character.
When he first undertook the management of the Evening Post, that paper
had taken no decided stand in the politics of the day. Its leanings,
however, were towards the aristocratic party. Mr. Bryant soon infused
into its columns some portion of his native originality and spirit. Its
politics assumed a higher tone, its disquisitions on public measures
became daily more pointed and stirring, and, finally, it declared with
great boldness on what was considered the more liberal side. From that
day to this, it has taken a leading part in political controversies,
and exerted a controlling influence over public opinion. In the fierce
excitement kindled by General Jackson's attack upon the United States
Bank, in the hot debates of the tariff and internal improvement
questions, and in the deeply-agitating, almost convulsive contest
which prostrated the banking system, the Evening Post maintained the
strongest ground, was generally in advance of its day, and never
faltered or flinched in the assertion of the severest tenets of the
democratic creed. Unlike most journals, it did not satisfy itself with
an undiscriminating defence of the temporary doctrines of party, but,
regardless alike of friend and foe, yet cautiously and calmly, it
expressed the whole truth in its length and breadth.
The manner in which Mr. Bryant has conducted these controversies is in
the highest degree honorable to him. He has disdained the miserable
arts by which small minds achieve the triumphs of their party or their
own profit. Drawing his principles from the independent conclusions
of his own mind, he has not shifted with every wind of doctrine. He
has regarded politics, not as the strife of opposing interests, nor
as a factious struggle for party supremacy, nor yet as a predatory
warfare for the spoils of success, but as the solemn conflict of great
principles. He has studied it as a comprehensive science, in which
the rights and happiness of millions of men are interested, and which
has issues and dependencies spreading over the events of many years.
In this light, he has sought to teach its truths, with conscientious
fidelity.
His intellectual adaptation to his calling is in many respects a
striking one. With a mind of quick sagacity, strong reasoning powers,
ready wit, and an inexhaustible fertility, he has been able to perform
its incessant and laborious duties with signal success. Disciplined,
as well as enriched by severe study, he has added to the learning of
books the attainments of extensive observation and travel. His style is
remarkable for its purity and elegance, no less than for the felicity
of its illustrations. In controversy, he most frequently resorts to a
caustic but graceful irony. He is playful without being vulgar, pointed
without grossness, sharp as a Damascus blade, and just as polished.
Nor are the compactness and strength of his expression less to be
admired, than his uniform perspicuity and ease. That he is sometimes
unnecessarily cutting, as some complain, is a fault, if it exist, that
springs from the native integrity of his mind, and the secluded and
refined nature of his pursuits. It has seemed to us, however, that this
alleged severity is no more than the spirit of justice as it manifests
itself in a pure and honest mind. For we doubt if a man more perfectly
just, and less liable to be warped by the questionable compliances of
society, ever lived.
We shall not enter into any criticism of Mr. Bryant's poetry here,
because it has been so fully estimated before, that there is no need of
doing so again; but there is one view which has been taken of it, on
which we shall offer a few remarks. That view occurs in the following
passage of Mr. J. R. Lowell's Fable for Critics:
"There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified,
As a smooth, silent iceberg that never is ignified,
Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights
With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.
He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation,
(There's no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation,)
Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on,
But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,--
He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on:
Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em,
But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm;
If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul,
Like being stirred up with the very North Pole,
"He is very nice reading in summer, but _inter_
_Nos_, we don't want _extra_ freezing in winter;
Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is,
When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices.
But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him,
He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him;
And his heart in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is,
Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities--
To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet?
No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite.
If you're one who _in loco_ (add _foco_ here) _desipis_,
You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece;
But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice,
And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain,
If you could only palm yourself off for a mountain.
Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning,
Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning,
Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth
Is worth near as much as your whole tuneful herd's worth.
No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant;
But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client,
By attempting to stretch him up into a giant:
If you choose to compare him, I think there are two persons
fit for a parallel--Thomson and Cowper;
I don't mean exactly,--there's something of each,
There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach;
Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness
Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness,
And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet,
Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,--
A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on
The heart which strives vainly to burst off a button,--
A brain which, without being slow or mechanic,
Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic;
He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten,
And the advantage that Wordsworth before him has written.
Now, what is the main charge here: that Mr. Bryant, while he has great
sympathy with external nature, with mountains and precipices, has no
sympathy with his fellow-man. 'Tis a weighty charge--the weightiest
that can be made against a man or a poet. It says virtually that he
has no soul, no heart, no impulse, no feeling, except for brutes and
vegetables; in short, that he is no better than a heathen savage, a
regular worshipper of stocks and stones, without natural affection, or
without God in the world. "For," as the apostle queries very wisely,
"if he love not man, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he
hath not seen?" Your lines, then, Mr. Quiz, imply nothing less than
black, bleak, barren, unredeemed practical Atheism!
But can there be the remotest semblance of truth in them? Is our Bryant
such a heathen or atheist as not to know his fellow-men except they
present themselves in the disguise of mountains, or he see them, like
the prophet, as trees walking? We appeal to you, young ladies, who have
been melted into tears by his pathos. We appeal to you, young men,
whose every purpose of good has been quickened into livelier action by
his words; and to you, old heads, whose experience has learned a riper
and mellower wisdom from his fine meditative views of the ends and aims
of life.
Yet, before you render your concurrent answers, with somewhat of
indignation that anybody could put you upon the task, let us, in good
American sort, begin with a few statistics. This is a question of fact,
and since it has been raised, we will determine it by facts.
There are, in Carey & Hart's splendid edition of Bryant--we mean
splendid as to the typography and paper, and not inclusive of those
ill-drawn sketches of Leutze, who has made the women all German and
given Mr. William Tell of Switzerland a straddle as wide as the
Dardanelles, to say nothing of the hideous face of Rizpah and that
Monk so excessively huge as to stand some forty feet from the pillar
against which he leans--this splendid edition, we say, contains just
one hundred and thirty-two poems, all told, to which,--stand up and
listen, to the sentence, Mr. Lowell!--more than seventy refer wholly to
subjects of an exclusively human interest--man in his being and doing,
while nine out of ten of the rest, though occupied primarily with
some phase of external nature, are yet so managed as to weave a deep
and beautiful human philosophy,--with the dull and dead proceedings
of the mechanical world. Yes, Mr. Critic, we say that there is a
very fine, a very rich, a very noble and very touching vein of human
sentiment, which runs through all of Bryant's writings, whereby, even
as much as Wordsworth, he makes these mountains and precipices a part
of our human life, and whereby, too, he makes the whole of us, who
read him lovingly, that is, who read him at all, much better men and
women, in our several spheres. No human sympathies forsooth! Why there
are hundreds, nay, thousands, of us, who have derived many of their
tenderest and noblest humanities from this very cold-blooded He-Daphne;
this fleshless marble Apollo,--this Ice-Palace and Alpine glacier,--far
shining brilliant, but oh how frigid!
By poems of an exclusive human interest, we mean, such as bear directly
on man's experience and duties and relations in this life: such as
the Ages, for instance, which commemorates the progress of humanity,
through all its trials and triumphs: such as Thanatopsis, which makes
the grave glorious, and pours the light of a lofty and serene religion
around our darkest hour: such as the Old Man's Funeral, more divine in
its descriptive beauty than the best sermon we ever heard: such as the
Battle Field, which animates us with the voice of trumpet to meet the
stern struggles of daily warfare: and such as many others in the same
vein, to say nothing of the Murdered Traveller, the Massacre at Scio,
the Hunter of the Prairies, the Living Lost, the Crowded Street, the
Greek Boy, the Arctic Lover, the African Chief, the Child's Funeral,
&c., &c. These could only have been prompted by a strong feeling of
sympathy with man, and though executed with the nicest finish of art,
are yet full of touching pathos and sentiment. The best proof of this
is, that they invariably excite the emotions they were intended to
excite--and that, too, in no milk and waterish way. They sink straight
into the heart; they open the fountains of the feelings; they send the
salt water to the eyes (if that be needed); they make the blood tingle;
in short, they produce that all-overishness which comes upon one when
he sees a fine action on the stage, or reads a noble passage in an
oration, or looks at Lentze's Washington. Try it on yourself, if you
don't believe it, or, what is better, try it on your little girl and
boy, whose feelings are not yet case-hardened or frozen over! It will
be a queer kind of frigidity that they will be witness to. Why, bless
your soul, Mr. Lowell, we are free to confess that we have ourselves
long, long ago, cried over the Indian Girl's Lament, and the Death of
the Flowers,--yes, cried, and we say it without shame,--indeed, with
a strange sense of regret that we cannot cry now over things of that
sort. _Eheu, eheu fugaces_, &c.
More than that, we have asseverated that even in poems which are
not immediately emotional, which are directed to some phase of mere
external nature, the humanitary tendencies of Bryant break out, or
shine through as veins of silver from the rocks. It is, in fact,
one of his most charming peculiarities, that he habitually connects
great moral and social truths with the various aspects of nature. His
muse is never satisfied with celebrating the pomp and glory of the
external world; she must find a deeper meaning in all than what the
eye sees or the ear hears; she must trace some beautiful analogy,
some spiritual significance on which both mind and heart can repose.
Bryant's descriptions of nature, it is granted, are accurate to a line;
what he speaks he knows; he finds no nightingales nor cowslips just
three thousand miles away from where it is possible for them to live;
and he never writes from his memory of books; yet his descriptions
are more than mere descriptions,--dull scientific catalogues of
quantities,--herbariums of dried plants,--museums of withered lifeless
twigs, and of stuffed animals standing thereupon! They have all a
meaning under them--a hidden wisdom--a genial yet profound human soul.
It is thus that he has wound our affections around the North Star, the
Winds, Monument Mountain, and even the Ruffled Grouse. How often, too,
in the midst of his general meditations and philosophizings, does some
touching individual allusion creep in, to show that the poet's heart is
all alive with sensibility: as in the Hymn to Death, which closes with
that solemn monody on the Departure of his Father:
"Alas! I little thought that the stern Power,
Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus,
Before the strain was ended. It must cease.--
For he is in his grave, who taught my youth
The art of verse, and in the bud of life
Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off
Untimely! when the reason in its strength
Ripened by years of toil and studious search,
And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught
The hand to practice best the lenient art,
To which thou gavest thy laborious days,
And last, thy life. And, therefore, when the earth
Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes,
And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill
Delayed their death hour, shuddered and turned pale
When thou wert gone. This faltering verse which thou
Shalt not, as wont, o'erlook, is all I have
To offer at thy grave,--this--and the hope
To copy thy example, and to leave
A name of which the wretched shall not think
As of an enemy's, whom they forgive
As all forgive the dead. Rest, therefore, thou
Whose early guidance trained my infant steps--
Rest, on the bosom of God, till the brief sleep
Of Death is over--and a happier life
Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust!"
Does an iceberg write in that strain, we should like to know? Or does
it mourn the death of the flowers, in this wise:
"And then I think of one, who in her youthful beauty died,
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side,
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.
Yet not unmeet it was that one like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers."
Or do icebergs yearn thus for communion in the after world with the
beloved spirits of this:
"In meadows fanned by Heaven's life-breathing wind
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere,
And larger movements of the unfettered mind
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?
The love that lived through all the stormy past,
And meekly with my harsher nature bore,
And deeper grew and tenderer to the last,
Shall it expire with life and be no more?"
Truly, that iceberg theory must be surrendered, it must melt and give
way before the gentle warmth of these words, and the thousand other
such words which any reader of Bryant will instantly recall.
But, having convinced and confuted Mr. Critic, we will proceed to
observe that there is after all a foundation of truth--a slender
one--for his towering superstructure of ridicule. It is this: that in
the outset of his career, Mr. Bryant's sympathies were, not too much
with external Nature, but too little with Man. At the same time, we
maintain that he has been constantly correcting this fault, and has
written more and more, the older he has grown, to the human heart. He
is not, and we hope never will be, a passionate writer, like Byron:
he is not one who deals, like Burns, with the warm, gushing, homely
affections of the poor every where: he has none of Schiller's energy of
conviction: none of the naive, playful garrulous bonhomie of Beranger;
simply, because he is of another order of man from all these. He is
quiet, gentle, contemplative, modest,--wise. Yet if no lava-tides
of passion burn through his veins, as were said to run through the
veins of Alfieri; if he is not, as Carlyle said of Dante, "a red-hot
cone of fire" shooting steadily up into the sky; if he cannot, with
Shakespeare, or Goethe, make the blood quiver and thrill for weeks by a
single word; he is still not a frigid, heartless writer, not altogether
an ice mountain, which dazzles always but never warms. He is too
earnest, too truthful, too good for that; too deeply penetrated by the
spiritual realities of life, too democratic in his aspirations for our
race, too hopeful of the future developments of society, in short, too
finely touched with that feminine element which is the characteristic
of genius. Besides, the great internal fires of the Earth, which shoot
up in terrific and explosive violence, stupendous as they are, do not
nurse the tender bud into life, nor cover the earth with verdure and
fruit. This is left to the genial sunshine and the warm summer rains.
In private intercourse, Mr. Bryant is what all his writings, poetical
as well as prose, indicate. His life is that of a student of
elegant and lofty literature. He is reserved in his manner, almost
to repulsiveness, yet in the social circle is witty, amiable, and
affectionate. When his sympathies are interested, the spirit of
tenderness and benevolence gleams like a flame from his eyes, and plays
around his features in a beautiful radiance. In his opinions of men, he
endeavors to be just; but when he is not just, the leaning is towards
the side of mercy. A strong natural irritability has been disciplined
by stern effort into the subjection of reason; and his tastes and
habits, though refined by careful culture, are as simple as those of a
child. Those who know him best are at a loss which most to admire, the
superiority of his faculties, or the modesty of his deportment.
SLIDING SCALES OF DESPAIR.
The London _Morning Chronicle_, after an observation that a hurriedly
written epitaph always appears, in the course of time, to require
revisal, expresses its admiration for the good sense of a Parisian
sculptor, who, when he took his instructions for a monument, insisted
upon the _veuve inconsolable_ or the heartstricken husband penning the
intended inscription, and even signing the holograph, as a further
authority to him for immortalizing so much utter despair. "The day
before the record was actually to be cut for eternity, his habit was to
send the inscription book to the mourner's house, lest any correction
should be desired. The havoc which, upon receiving back the volume, he
usually found made among laudatory adjectives and adverbs of infinity,
was, to a good man, a delightful evidence of the cooling and healing
powers of time."
DEATH IN YOUTH.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY H. W. PARKER.
'Tis sad to leave the lovely world,
The blazoned banner of the sky,
And all the Earth's sublimity,
Are, day by day, in light unfurled,
In glory float before the eye.
The practised ear and eye are clearer,
The heart is deeper, Nature dearer,
From year to year: 'tis sad to die.
'Tis hard to leave the busy world--
To feel our courage mounting high
On thoughts that just begin to fly,
Then arrow-struck and swiftly hurled
Downward to dim obscurity.
Our life is always a beginning,
A hope of honor worth the winning;
We hope to do, and hoping, die.
'Tis hard to leave a stormy world,
When every watcher may descry
A happy Future drawing nigh,
And all the nations, onward whirled,
Behold the sunny shores that lie
Beyond that ever-heaving ocean--
The Present, with its wild commotion;
Alas, to see, to sink, to die.
And yet to leave a weary earth
For higher life, is well, we know,
Our being is a constant flow,
And death itself is newer birth;
The seed decays that it may grow;
A world sublime awaits the dying
Who purely lived. Away with sighing;
The Past is passed; 'tis well to go.
A GERMAN HAND-BOOK OF AMERICA.
We have at present in our hands several recently published European
works relative to America, all of which possess more than ordinary
claims to attention. We have, however, chosen the most unpretending as
the subject of our present remarks, since, for the thinking majority of
our readers, it will undoubtedly prove the most interesting. The volume
to which we allude is entitled, _Des Auswanderers' Handbuch_, or, _The
Emigrants' Hand-book: a True Sketch of the United States of North
America, and Reliable Counsellor for Men of every Rank and Condition
who propose Emigrating Thither: by_ GEORGE M. VON ROSS, of North
America, Editor of the "_Allgemeinen Auswanderungs-Zeitung_" (Universal
Emigration Journal). Published at Elberfeld and Iserlohn, by Julius
Baedeker.
The author, according to his preface, is an American by birth, and
was for many years a farmer in the eastern, western, and southwestern
sections of the United States. That he is not without learning
and ability is evinced by his remarkably excellent work entitled
_Taschen-Fremdwörterbuch, oder Verdeutschung von mehr als 16,000
Fremdwörter_--(_i. e._ a Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words, or the
adoption into German of more than Sixteen Thousand Foreign Words).
This book is familiar in Germany, and exhibits great philological
acumen, as well as a thorough knowledge of German in its minutest
difficulties. At one time Mr. Ross distinguished himself by attacking
Schröter's well-known pamphlet relative to the Catholic emigration to
St. Mary's, in Pennsylvania, and he has since published a smaller work
for emigrants, entitled _Rathschlage und Warnungen_, or, Counsels and
Warning.
The performance now before us is written in that straightforward
practical style which may be best characterized by the statement that
"He had something to say, _and he said it_." That it is impartial is
not its least merit. A foreigner, it is true, may occasionally be found
who passes unprejudiced judgments on another country, but that any one
still retaining home-born sympathies and feelings with his native land
should do so is a wonder. And we deem it a creditable thing in this
work, that where he is called upon to describe any calling, trade,
or profession, he is not afraid to say boldly--In this calling the
German cannot succeed--in that, he is unapt--in a third, the American
surpasses him; while, on the other hand, he amply encourages the
emigrant as regards occupations for which he is qualified. Many writers
of such books have cast a _couleur de rose_ light over every thing
(well knowing that by such means their books would be more saleable),
and induced industrious men, following callings unheard of in this
country, to emigrate, in the absurd hope of finding more constant and
better paid employment here than at home. An intelligent American, who
would not cross the Atlantic, or hardly ascend in a balloon, without
previously _calculating_ the time and chances of arrival or descent,
and who certainly would do neither without first informing himself as
to every imaginable particular of his ultimate destination, can hardly
conceive the vast necessity of such books. He would, by every means,
gather information from those who had visited in person the destined
land. Not so the common German emigrant. Thousands embark in the belief
that New-York is some mysterious golden-glowing Indian city, surrounded
by orange groves and palm-trees. In the village of Weinsberg, in
Suabia, several years since, a well-educated student was overheard to
remark of some peasants, "Tell them that in your country the people
have two heads, and they'll believe you."
Let us now, by extracts, give our readers an idea of the manner in
which Mr. Von Ross describes the land of his birth to the land of his
adoption. The first item of interest is his sketches of the respective
characteristics of the Yankee and Southerner.
"Superficial observers have spoken of the inhabitant of the Northern
States as if money were his only aim--as if he were inspired only by
selfishness and avarice--and as if he estimated men by the weight of
their purses. But those who regard him closely, and judge otherwise
than by first appearances, will discover in him a calculating
(_berechnenden_), enterprising, thoroughly practical man, caring
little for pleasure, and seeking his recreation (_erholung_) in the
domestic circle. They will find in him a man who, with iron industry,
fights his way through life, esteeming wealth, it is true--not the
inherited, however, but _the earned_, which testifies to the ability
of its possessor. A man, in fine, who with unbending courage bears
the blow of destiny, and is thereby only stimulated to new exertions.
The Southerner, on the contrary, is more _chivalresque_--he lives to
live. The climate in which he is born has also a material influence
upon his manners, customs, and character: effecting, in reality, the
same difference which we observe between the cool, reflective, tough
North German, and the jovial, genial, easily excited South German,
or Frenchman. We would hardly have deemed it necessary to inform the
reader that in _thus_ sketching the inhabitants of the United States in
light outlines, we do not include the mixed and Europeanized population
of the Atlantic cities, had we not learned by experience that many
travellers slightly acquainted only with the Atlantic States and their
vicinity, have from these sketched all North America and its people. He
who would know the American, must also know the cities of the interior.
"If, in addition to these characteristics, we should describe the
personal and distinctive appearance of the Northerner and Southerner,
we would say that the first are, generally speaking, large, tall,
and spare--their ladies beautiful and of delicate complexion; while
the Southerners are broad-shouldered and powerful--the female sex
being voluptuously formed and beautiful, but when not subject to the
influence of exercise and fresh air of a sallow complexion.
"Every North American is--and who has a better right so to _be_--an
enthusiastic _honorer (vereher) of his fatherland_, but he does not
measure out by inches the limits of his native land, or bound his
patriotism by the clod on which his cradle rested--for to him the
roar of the Rio del Norte, the thunder-peal of Niagara, and the
murmur of the Pacific or Atlantic oceans have equally a familiar,
home-like sound. Nor less than the land of his birth does he esteem
its laws, constitution, and institutions, and regards them in nowise
as oppressive, but as protective. Those laws he made for himself, and
chose himself as their executor. RESPECT FOR THE LAW is to the American
self-respect.
"The so often blamed _national pride_ of the American, if not really
praiseworthy, is at least pardonable; for a nation which could rise
like a single man, and, at every sacrifice, throw off the yoke
of England--a nation which has given birth to such men as GEORGE
WASHINGTON, THOMAS JEFFERSON, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, and many others whose
names are mentioned with wonder all over this world--a nation which
occupies the first rank in trade, commerce, and industry, _may_ be
proud, and _must_ be proud, as long as its power is free from sloth and
lethargy."
And here we may be permitted to interrupt for an instant our noble
Man of Ross (the reader will observe that he wears the aristocratic
_von_), for the sake of saying a good word over this honest,
hard-fisted go-ahead eulogium of our country. There be those
ultra-Europeanized, or _soi-disant_ refinedly educated Americans,
who will complacently smile at this recapitulation of United States
excellencies, and if slangily inclined, brand it as "pea-nut," "stump
eloquence," and "Fourth-of-Julyism." The sum-total being, that it
is vulgar rhodomontade. With all due respect, we think differently.
Let the reader remember that this is addressed to a German--a
_foreign_--audience, who are greatly in need just at present of a
few scraps of such oratory as this, were it only to counteract the
malignant influences of the English tourists, whose works are far more
extensively read in Germany than we imagine. Mrs. Trollope's work on
America, which, at the present day, is regarded only with contempt or
laughter by the educated in England, has been, and is even yet, read
with a feeling akin to wonder by the honest simple-hearted Germans. A
wonder indeed so intense, at the marvellous marvels therein narrated,
that it generally results in inspiring in the mind of the reader
credulous enough to believe, an intense desire to visit the land of
liberty.
"In no part of the world are ladies treated with so much respect as in
North America. They can make, by land or water, the longest journeys
without the apprehension of having their sense of delicacy offended
by hearing an improper expression, and, as far as _public_ opinion is
concerned, the law allows them privileges greater than they obtain in
any other country. By marriage, the wife enters at once into equal
possession of her husband's property; the simple testimony of a woman
is of the same force as the oath of a man, and the testimony of a woman
when confirmed by oath, can only be neutralized by the oaths of three
men. The ill-treatment of a wife by her husband is severely punished;
but such cases are as unusual of occurrence as that a woman takes undue
advantage of her rights. It may moreover be confidently asserted, that
America is the true home of connubial love. The consciousness of her
rights gives the American lady a dignity of manner which admirably
blends with the amiable attractions of her sex. Not a little of the
fascination so peculiar to the ladies of North America is, however,
due to the circumstance that no woman--not even the poorest--is ever
obliged to perform any task based upon merely physical strength. She
rules at _home_ undisputed; and this is the reason why the poorest
house in America is a model of neatness and order."
"'_Help yourself_' (aid yourself), is a favorite phrase of the
American, and which has given him the character of wanting in charity,
while in fact it is nothing but a simple indication of the means
by which every man in sound health can in that country relieve his
poverty. _Work_ in America is neither difficult to obtain, nor is
it hemmed in and oppressed by the regulations and requirements of
_guilds_, unions, and peculiar laws. _Beggars_ and _vagabonds_ find
indeed no favor in his eyes; but unfortunate guiltless poverty
invariably meets with his warmest aid, as is evidenced by the numerous
hospitals, institutions, &c., which would astonish any one reflecting
on the youth of the country. Kindness and hospitality may also be
included among his virtues.
"From which the reader may justly infer, that beggary and theft are
rare in the United States; and though it may be alleged that such
occurrences are frequent in the large cities, it may be at the same
time remembered that these are the _rendezvous_ of the scum of all
nations, while on the other hand the fact, that in the country, and
even in the villages, locks are rare on house and stable doors, affords
the strongest confirmation that America presents by far fewer instances
of robbery than the greater part of Europe."
After which, Herr Von Ross indulges in a few attractive remarks on the
facility of marriage in America, which would, however, prove far less
astonishing to our American, than to his German readers: concluding
with the following paragraph, which is not devoid of a certain degree
of observation:
"Young married couples whose means will not permit them to keep house,
pass their first year of wedded life in boarding-houses, by which means
the facilities to marriage are greatly extended."
The following passages on our alleged want of sociability identify
us to a certain degree, and to our minds not unpleasantly, with our
English cousins. Of all persons, those to be most pitied or despised
are "the weak brethren," who, devoid of internal or intellectual
resources, or manly self-reliance, declaim against a nation or a
society at large because its members, forsooth, do not receive them
with open arms. The true _citoyen du monde_--the genuine cosmopolite,
never has occasion to make this complaint against any country. For the
more a man depends on himself and the less on others for happiness,
just in that proportion will it be his luck to attract sympathy and
sociability when among strangers. Narrow-minded Spaniards, and those
of other nations, _who travel for the express purpose of getting into
fashionable society_, are peculiarly liable to this reproach. Such a
foreigner have we heard, minutely and boringly detailing to a stern
circle of impregnable natives, the noble and munificent style of
hospitality with which _they_ would be treated, were they visitors
in _his_ fatherland: "In my contree 'spose you come strangére in one
cittee, a gentleman take you in hees house. In ze morning come one
buttiful gairl wiz coffees. Zen dey send you one horse carriage for
make de promenàde. Aftair dinner come buttiful gairls again wiz ticket
on silvare waiter for whole opera box! Wat you sink of dat, hey?"
"_Think!_" replied a native, "why I think that you take great pains to
make a strange gentleman feel _very uncomfortable_." But to return to
our writer.
"Strangers who have hastily travelled and superficially examined
America, and those who have judged by the statements of others rather
than by their own experience, have ascribed to the American a want of
sociability and a stiff and repulsive manner towards strangers. True
it is that in America it is no very easy matter to become intimate
with a man or establish one's self in his family circle--but he who
has once attained this point, becomes a home friend in the fullest
sense of the word, and will find hidden beneath the stern, earnest
exterior of the American, a warm heart, and in his conversation a
remarkable degree of familiar confidence. Those who have detected in
the confident manner and sense of independence which the American
manifests, any thing approaching to presumption, must assuredly have
been the newly arrived, who could not accustom themselves to the idea
that even laborers should consider that they had with others equal
right to express their opinions. The man, however, who is free from
prejudice will not fail to admire a nation, wherein the poorest is on
an equality with the richest, and where the rich, at least, do not
take it on themselves to assert their superiority. Seldom, indeed, do
we find a native American, conscious of his right to equality, giving
a stranger (his possible superior in intelligence or education) to
understand that he considers himself quite as good as any one--the
right is to him a thing so natural, that it never even occurs to
him to boast of it. This is, unfortunately, far from being the case
with the majority of the more ignorant German emigrants, accustomed
in their own country to oppressive laws, and not unfrequently hard
treatment, yet without learning the orderly conduct which these should
have taught, and who think that in America they have a right to do as
they please. The American Germans seem to entertain the opinion that
it is their republican duty, at all times, with or without occasion
or provocation, to give to every man belonging in Europe to the
higher classes, to understand and feel that the difference of rank
is not recognized--as if indeed, in America far more than in Europe,
education and culture did not of themselves indicate the rank which
a man occupies. These American Germans all nourish the jealousy of
trade (_Brodneid_) the miserable little hatreds, and the whole range
of German disunity or local enmities, which they brought over with
them, with a care and zeal worthy of a better cause. Seldom indeed do
we hear a German there call himself German, he remains as of old a
Prussian, a Bavarian, a Hanoverian, a Hessian, or an Altenburger. Even
the irritation between North and South Germans still continues, but let
one of them only get together so many scraps of English as will barely
render him intelligible, _then_ he denies his fatherland--Americanizes
both Christian and surnames--adopts tobacco chewing, and other evil
customs of the New World, and draws on himself with full justice the
contempt of his more sensible fellow-countrymen and the ridicule of the
Americans. Let no one misunderstand us, we pronounce this hard judgment
not against the entire German population of North America, but still
a great--a very great portion thereof are with the fullest justice
obnoxious to these charges, and he who has lived any time in the German
districts of North America, and more particularly among the German, or
German descended population of Pennsylvania, will agree with us with
all his heart."
These are not amiable words, even if merited, but we must still admire
the energy with which the blow is given. Often have we despised the
contemptible and weak spirit which could induce so many almost newly
arrived Germans to change fine sounding and easily enunciable names,
into vulgar, snobbish appellatives for which no child would thank
them. Often have we wondered at the pitiable impertinence with which
ignorant Deutschers have taken it upon themselves, in the second
rate American-German journals to abuse our national observance of
the Sabbath, or our respect for women, and despised the small-minded
eagerness with which they caught up any petty disrespect toward
females, and cited it complacently as a proof that this noble attribute
was on the wane in _the land of their adoption_. Often have we been
amazed at the readiness with which illiterate rascals, whose ideas of
government or political liberty, were at home bounded by the word:
"_Polizei_," "_Strafe_," "_Wanderbuch_," "_Zuchthaus_," and "_Fechten_"
take it upon themselves to curse, ban and vilify the only land in the
world where they could find bread or protection. But again, with Mr.
Ross, we earnestly protest that we do _not_ believe that such conduct
or such foolish ingratitude can ever with justice be attributed to any
respectable or well educated Germans. Some few there have been, indeed,
who, urged by the selfish stimulant of a desire for popularity, have
thus flattered the prejudices of their more ignorant fellow-countrymen,
but none who have thus spoken from the heart.
In conclusion, we may remark that if, as has generally been said, we
are a sensitive race, attaching undue importance to the good opinion of
our neighbors, and striving infinitely more than we need to keep up a
good national reputation, we ought to be much obliged to all who, like
Mr. Ross, preach to other countries in their own tongue and with such a
peculiarly distinct enunciation, their candid and unbiased opinion of
their native land. What must strike the reader is indeed the remarkably
unembarrassed and independent air with which he addresses his audience,
and the coolness with which, on their own ground, he points out their
own defects, and their general inferiority to the freemen of "this
great and glorious country." He tells them that America is a land of
hard work--a church-going, Sabbath-keeping, God-fearing, moral land,
for which they must prepare themselves; and no Methodist ever assured
his flock of his solemn conviction that they were all irreclaimable
sinners, with greater earnestness than Mr. Ross announces to his
public, in the plainest terms, that the great majority of the German
emigrants to America are a pack of graceless, narrow-minded, ignorant,
fatherland-denying knaves; ending with an earnest appeal to all whom
it may concern, or are therein informed, to know if they do not with
heart and soul (_aus vollum Flerzen_) coincide with him in these
views. But the American reader who for an instant imagines that Mr.
Ross will lose either popularity or reputation among his auditors,
is decidedly mistaken. Accustomed as we are to regard with nervous
anxiety the slightest opinion of the most insignificant foreigner
regarding our country, and to raise high very tornadoes of indignation
against such writers as have abused our own manners and customs, we
can hardly conceive that an author after "_giving it_" to his readers
in such a remarkably hot-and-heavy style, and, to make all perfectly
intelligible, concluding with the assurance that it is from his very
heart, can still proceed quietly, editing a paper, keeping up his list,
and remaining unmobbed.
But we trust that the day is not distant when foreigners will no
longer be able to taunt us with undue sensitiveness. So rapidly have
we of late years increased in power, in wealth, in influence, that
our conviction of our own might has not kept pace with its growth.
Like the young giant in Rabelais, we have lain in our cradle without
an attempt to break the chain. But with the consciousness of our vast
and immovable moral and political superiority (a consciousness which
despite the good self-opinion so generally attributed to Americans,
has hitherto scarce dawned on us), will come a quiet disregard of the
united abuse and laughter of all Europe. A Dickens may _then_ issue
his "Notes"--a Marryatt, publish his "Diary"--without attracting the
attention or anger of the American press from Maine to Mexico.
And why need such works irritate our entire public _now_? Nay, we
believe the period of our extravagant sensibility to foreign opinions
must at length be considered as past, and that hereafter we shall be
more in peril of excess of recklessness and bravado. The effect of this
loss of a national characteristic we shall not here speculate upon. But
a brief period will be necessary for its illustration.
GONDOLETTAS.
A RECOLLECTION OF MENDELSSHON'S "SONGS WITHOUT
WORDS."
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY ALICE B. NEAL.
THE PARTING.
Far out in the moonlight how softly we glide!
Scarce knowing, scarce heeding the lapse of the tide.
I watch the light shadows steal over thy face,
And pillow thy head in a last, long embrace.
Thy heart keeps low music still beating to mine,
Thy white arms around me I slowly entwine--
I part the wild tresses that shroud thy pale cheek,
I kiss thee--I clasp thee--no word dare I speak.
Alas! that star-light should fade from the sky!
Alas for the parting that draweth so nigh!
Glide slowly--ye ripples--flow softly, oh tide!
For the silence of _death_, must the living divide.
MEMORIES.
Again, but alone, I am out on the sea--
I come, where so often I floated with thee;
I list for the tones of thy low evening hymn--
But the breeze hath a moan--and the starlight is dim.
I think of thee here, of thy deep mournful eyes,
That spoke to my own in mute, thrilling replies;
Of thy gentle caress, and thy cold brow, so pale,
When I pressed that last kiss--but I utter no wail!
I garner in silence the memories of years,
With yearnings too tender, too hopeless for tears;
For down 'neath the stillness and hush of its waves,
_The tide of my life, like the sea, hath its graves_!
THE DUTCH GOVERNORS OF NEW AMSTERDAM.
COMMUNICATED TO THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
BY JOHN ROMEYN BRODHEAD.[2]
In the year 1649, there appeared in Holland a small anonymous pamphlet
of forty-two pages, bearing the imprint of Antwerp, and entitled
_Breeden Raedt, aen de Vereenighde Nederlandeche Provintien_, or Plain
Counsels to the United Netherlands' Provinces. It is very rare; the
only copy I know of, in this country, is the one with which I have been
kindly furnished by my friend Mr. Campbell, the Deputy Librarian at the
Hague.
[2] The substance of this interesting article was read by Mr. Brodhead
at the last meeting of the Historical Society.--_Ed. International._
It purports to be a conversation between ten Dutch interlocutors,
respecting the trade of the Netherlands West India Company. The chief
speaker, is a Dutch "schipper," who had been in New Netherland. In
the course of his remarks, he gives many very interesting and novel
details, concerning the two directors, Kieft and Stuyvesant, and their
respective administrations. As some of these particulars have never
before been known to our historians, I propose to translate a few of
the most interesting. It is very evident, however, that the narrator
was not a mere schipper of a merchant vessel. He was intimately
acquainted with the details of the local politics of New Netherland;
and evidently was personally unfriendly both to Kieft and Stuyvesant.
From internal evidence, and for various other reasons, I have been
led to believe that this little work was prepared by or under the
superintendence of Cornelius Melyn, who had been one of the foremost
and most consistent advocates of the popular cause under Kieft, and who
suffered gross injustice from the tyrannical and oppressive conduct of
Stuyvesant. The title-page of the tract states that it was "prepared
and compiled from divers true and veritable memorials, by 'I. A.,'" who
is described as G.W.O., perhaps Gezaghebber, or Director of the West
India Company. Whoever these initials, I. A., are meant to represent,
the author seems to have fully adopted the views and expressed the
feelings of Melyn. While, therefore, some allowance should be made
for occasional exhibitions of personal bitterness, the statements in
the Breeden Raedt appear to be entitled to full credit, respecting
the facts which they relate. Some of these are entirely novel; others
are confirmatory of what we have before known; all of them seem to be
entirely harmonious with the story of New Netherland.
The antecedents of director Kieft, (of whom we have heretofore known
little or nothing previously to his arrival at Manhattan in 1638), are
thus related: "William Kieft was born at Amsterdam. From youth he was
educated as a merchant; and, after having taken charge of, or rather
neglected, his own and his master's business, for a certain time, at
Rochelle, he happened to fail there. Upon which, according to custom,
his portrait was stuck upon the gallows there, as several living
witnesses, who have seen it with their own eyes, can yet testify. This
man, having been for some time out of business, was employed to ransom
several Christian prisoners out of Turkey. To such a bankrupt the
money was intrusted. He went and freed some, for whom there was the
least to pay; but the others, whose friends had contributed the most
money, he left in bondage. For these, their parents and friends were
once more obliged to raise funds. This fine brother was appointed by
the directors, to be Director over the inhabitants and trade of New
Netherland in the year 1637."
The events of the Indian war in 1643, are referred to with a
distinctness which leaves little doubt that the narrator was himself,
one of the witnesses of them. In these respects, the Breeden Raedt
confirms the statements of De Vries and other authorities in the
Holland documents at Albany. With respect to the transactions on Long
Island in 1644, and the civil and religious difficulties which divided
the people against director Kieft until his successor arrived in 1647,
the pamphlet exhibits several interesting and novel details.
Stuyvesant is described as "the son of a clergyman in Friesland, and
who formerly, at Franiker (the seat of a famous high school, now
extinct), had robbed the daughter of his own landlady. Being caught
in the fact, he had been let off for his father's sake; otherwise it
would perhaps have been there, that he must have paid the penalty of
his first offence." On his arrival in New Netherland, Stuyvesant is
described as conducting himself as arrogantly as the "Grand Duke of
Moscovy," and as promptly taking the side of his predecessor Keift,
against Melyn and Kuyter, the leaders of the popular party. In this,
the Breeden Raedt confirms our official accounts. The two patriots
were tried, convicted, and sentenced to be fined, and transported to
Holland. They were sent as prisoners on board the ship Princess, in
which the late director Kieft, and Dominie Everardus Bogardus, the
first clergyman in New Netherland also embarked. The ship struck on
the English coast, "where this ungodly Kieft seeing death before his
eyes, sighing very deeply, dubiously addressed both these (Kuyter and
Melyn): 'Friends, I have done you wrong, can you forgive me?' The ship
being broken into eight fragments, drove the whole night in the water.
By daybreak, the greater part (of passengers) were drowned. Cornelius
Melyn lost his son. Dominie Bogardus, Kieft, Captain John De Vries,
and a great number of people were drowned. There was swallowed up a
great treasure with Kieft, for the ship was returning with more than
four hundred thousand guilders. Joachim Petersen Kuyter remained alone
on one of the fragments of the ship, upon which there was a piece of
cannon sticking out of a port, with which he was saved at daylight. He
had taken it for a man and had spoken to it, but receiving no answer
thought he was dead. In the end, he was thrown on shore with it, to
the great astonishment of the English, who came down to the strand by
thousands, and who set up the piece of cannon as a lasting memorial.
Melyn floating on his back in the sea, fell in with others who were
clinging to a part of the wreck, and was driven on a sand bank, which
became dry with the ebb tide." From this place they made their escape
to the shore. Kuyter and Melyn, after saving their lives, became most
solicitous to secure their papers, which were to serve for their
defence in Holland against the sentences which had been pronounced on
them in New Netherland. After three days' labor, they fished up a box
containing these valued papers. With these they proceeded to Amsterdam,
and laid their case before the States General, which granted them an
appeal, and meanwhile suspended Stuyvesant's sentence.
After describing the escape of the "patriots," Kuyter and Melyn, and
their safe arrival in Holland with their papers, the Breeden Raedt
continues its review of the Provincial administration, and gives some
particulars respecting the chief officers and public affairs in New
Netherland, to be found no where else. The narrative is brought down to
August, 1649, at which time Melyn, who had returned to New Netherland,
seems to have embarked a second time for Holland, to bring his case
again before the States General. He appears to have sailed in the
same vessel which conveyed Van der Donck, Couwenhoven, and Bont, the
delegates who had been commissioned to carry over the "Vertoogh," or
remonstrance of the commonalty of New Netherland, against Stuyvesant's
arbitrary government. The Breeden Raedt appears to have been printed
soon after Melyn's return to the Fatherland. As it contains very severe
reflections upon official persons in the Province, and as it was an
anonymous tract, it was perhaps judged prudent to publish it with the
imprint of Antwerp. I think, however, that it was actually printed in
Holland. The Breeden Raedt was one of the earliest, if not the very
earliest separate pamphlet respecting New Netherland. It was followed
in 1650, by the Vertoogh; in 1651, by Hartger's description; and in
1655, by Van der Donck's larger work, and by De Vries's Journal printed
at Alckmaer.
AN AUTUMN BALLAD.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY W. A. SUTLIFFE.
Come, say the Ave-Mary prayer.
And chant the Miserere!
The autumn frosts have chilled the air,
The winter groweth dreary!
The willow, bending o'er the tomb,
Moans dolefully for ever,--
The north-wind bloweth in the gloom,
The morning cometh never!
Avaunt, thou memory, springing up
Like demon bold uprising!
Full cold and bitter is our cup,
Nor needeth thine apprising!
The Future glimmereth in the dark,
We hear the billows roaring,
The wind beleaguereth our barque,
The storm will soon be pouring.
Of all the visions of our youth,
The mind is disenchanted;
When manhood sternly paints the truth,
The soul is sadly haunted.
The sun is sepulchred of night,
The flower in autumn bendeth;
Fair fruitfulness has soonest blight--
All beauty graveward tendeth.
The world is petrified at heart,
No sympathy is welling;
Each plays in mine his soulless part,
Too woful 'tis for telling.
Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,
And chant the Miserere!
The autumn frosts have chilled the air--
The winter groweth dreary!
Bethink ye that He made ye all!
The same God bends above ye!
The same God spreads the light or pall,
The same God deigns to love ye!
The wind that blows the cultured lea.
And through the rich man's hedges,
Sighs round the poor man pleasantly,
And o'er the barren ledges.
The rich go up on Fortune's wheel.
The poor are crushed beneath it;
Oppression draws the bloody steal,
Alas, when will she sheathe it!
Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,
And chant the Miserere!
The autumn frosts have chilled the air,
The winter groweth dreary!
The beldame sitteth at her loom,
She weepeth 'mid the weaving;
The orphan lingers at the tomb,
He's mickle cause for grieving.
The dust is laid with dropping tears;
The slave cowers 'neath the scourging;
Each day is filled with busy fears,
Like restless spirits urging.
O, God! within the Heaven unseen!
When will the sun be shining;
Until the spring-time cometh green,
Forgive us for our pining!
Then say the Ave-Mary prayer,
And chant the Miserere!
The autumn frosts have chilled the air,
The winter groweth dreary!
CARLYLE'S LIFE OF STERLING[3]
No work has yet appeared this season in which the better portion of
the reading public have felt so deep an interest as in the Life of
John Sterling, by THOMAS CARLYLE. But this is less a consequence of
the subject than of the authorship. Any thing from the hand of Carlyle
is sure of a large audience, but he has hitherto done nothing in which
his personality was likely to be so much involved as in this life of
his friend "ARCHÆUS." We copy from the London _Spectator_ the following
reviewal of it:
"The domain of political economy is not unlimited; the laws of
supply and demand are not the only or the strongest forces at
work in nature. Here is a man whom the world would have been
well content to leave quiet in his early grave by the sea-shore
in the sweetest of English islands; to leave him there to the
soft melodies of the warm wind and the gentle rain, and the
pious visits now and then of those who knew and loved him
when his eye was bright and his voice eloquent with sparkling
thoughts and warm affections. He had done nothing that the
public cared for; had left no traces on the sands of Time that
the next tide would not have effaced. But he lived amongst men
who write books, amongst some of the very best of such; and two
of the foremost of them loved him so well, that they could not
let his memory die,--thought that the positive actual results
of his life made known to the public were but faint indications
of the power that lay in him though sorely foiled and baffled,
and that he in his individual spiritual progress typified
better than most the struggle that the age is passing through,
its processes, and its results. But the two men, though united
in affection for Sterling, were so different in other respects,
that the memorial raised by the one could scarcely fail to be
unsatisfactory to the other. Archdeacon Hare, the author of
the earlier biography, is a man of encyclopoedic knowledge,--a
profound classical scholar, the most learned and philosophical
of modern English theologians, at once accurate and wide in his
acquaintance with European history and literature. And this
large survey of the forms under which the men of the past have
thought and acted, has not led in him to an indifference to all
forms, but rather to a keener sense of the organic vitality
of forms, especially of national institutions, whether civil
or ecclesiastical polities, states or churches. Moreover,
apart from this general characteristic, which would lead to an
intellectual and practical reverence for the institutions of
his own land, and a hesitating caution in the introduction of
constitutional changes, Mr. Hare is an English churchman of no
ordinary cast. He has passed from the region of traditional
belief, has skirted the bogs and quicksands of doubt and
disbelief, and has found firm footing where alone it seems
possible, in a revelation whose letter is colored by the
human media through which it has passed, and in a faith whose
highest mysteries are not only harmonious with but necessary
complements to the truths of reason. The English Church is to
him the purest embodiment of his religious idea, as the English
constitution was to him, in common with Niebuhr, Coleridge,
and other great thinkers, of the idea of a state. Such a man
could not write a life like Sterling's without feeling that his
relation to Christianity and the Church was the great fact for
him as for all of us; and that the change in him, from hearty
acceptance of Christian doctrine and church organization to
a rejection of the former and something very like contempt
for the latter, needed explanation. That explanation he has
sought in the overthrow of the balance of Sterling's life
through repeated attacks of illness, which shut him out from
practical duties, and threw him entirely upon speculation,
thereby disproportionately developing the negative side of
him, already too strong from early defects of education: and
few persons will, we should think, be found to deny Mr. Hare's
general position, that the pursuit of speculative philosophy
as the business of life has this tendency; Mr. Carlyle, we
should have supposed least of all men. But a special cause
interferes with Mr. Carlyle's recognition of the principle as
applicable to Sterling. Christianity, as understood commonly
perhaps everywhere, except, it may be, at Weimar and Chelsea,
and church formulas certainly as understood everywhere, he
is in the habit of classing under a category which in his
hands has become an extensive one--that of _shams_. He calls
them by various forcible but ugly names,--as "old clothes,"
"spectral inanities," "gibbering phantoms," or, with plainer
meaning, "huge unveracities and unrealities." That Sterling at
any time of his life accepted these for "eternal verities" he
cannot consider a step from the "no" to the "yes," nor their
repudiation as a step backwards from the "yes" to the "no." Let
him speak for himself. He is commenting on Sterling's entry
into orders as Mr. Hare's curate at Hurstmonceaux:
"Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to find sanctuary in
the old Church, and desperately grasp the hem of her garment
in such manner, there will at present be many opinions; and
mine must be recorded here in flat reproval of it, in mere
pitying condemnation of it, as a rash, false, unwise and
unpermitted step. Nay, among the evil lessons of his time to
poor Sterling, I cannot but account this the worst; properly
indeed, as we may say, the apotheosis, the solemn apology and
consecration, of all the evil lessons that were in it to him.
Alas! if we did remember the divine and awful nature of God's
Truth, and had not so forgotten it as poor doomed creatures
never did before,--should we, durst we in our most audacious
moments, think of wedding it to the world's untruth, which is
also, like all untruths, the devil's? Only in the world's last
lethargy can such things be done, and accounted safe and pious!
Fools! 'Do you think the living God is a buzzard idol,' sternly
asks Milton, 'that you dare address Him in this manner?' Such
darkness, thick sluggish clouds of cowardice and oblivious
baseness, have accumulated on us; thickening as if towards the
eternal sleep! It is not now known, what never needed proof
or statement before, that Religion is not a doubt; that it is
a certainty,--or else a mockery and horror. That none or all
of the many things we are in doubt about, and need to have
demonstrated and rendered probable, can by any alchemy be made
a 'Religion' for us; but are and must continue a baleful, quiet
or unquiet, Hypocrisy for us; and bring--_salvation_, do we
fancy? I think it is another thing they will bring; and are, on
all hands, visibly bringing, this good while!----"
Herein consists the whole difference between Hare and Carlyle in their
views of Sterling's career. They looked at it from such opposite points
that what is the zenith to one is the nadir to the other. What Sterling
himself thought of it, was strikingly expressed to his brother, Captain
Anthony Sterling, by a comparison, of his case "to that of a young lady
who has tragically lost her lover, and is willing to be half-hoodwinked
into a convent, or in any noble or quasi-noble way to escape from
a world which has become intolerable." The truth seems to be, that
Sterling went into orders under the combined influence of remorse for
the share he had inadvertently had in causing the disastrous fate of a
near relative (Mr. Boyd, who was shot with Torrijos in Spain), and of
a gradual disenchantment from trust in mere political schemes for the
regeneration of mankind,--a disease more common to the genial young
men of his time than of ours. That while in the exercise of his duties
as a parish-priest he was energetic, useful, and happy, the evidence
in Mr. Hare's book is fully sufficient to show. It is impossible to
say whether his scepticism would have come upon him had he continued
in that active career; but it is certainly a gratuitous supposition of
Mr. Carlyle that the ill-health which put an end to it was only the
outward and ostensible cause of its termination, and does not appear
to be borne out by a single letter or expression of Sterling's own.
Indeed, for years after he left Hurstmonceaux, he seemed to continue as
firm in his attachment to Christianity as when he was there; though,
on the other hand, it may well be doubted whether a man of Sterling's
intellect, who would surrender his beliefs to Strauss's _Leben Jesu_,
is likely in the present day to keep them under any conceivable
circumstances. We think that Mr. Hare on the one hand has attributed
too exclusive an influence to Sterling's forced inactivity, and Mr.
Carlyle has certainly not taken it sufficiently into account as a
determining cause of his skepticism.
[3] The Life of John Sterling. By Thomas Carlyle. Published by Chapman
& Hall. [Boston, republished by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1851.]
But whatever subject Mr. Carlyle takes up, and whether he be right or
wrong in his opinions, he is sure to write an interesting book. He is
never wearisome, and whether his tale have been twice told or not, he
clothes it by his original treatment with an attractive charm that few
writers can lend even to an entirely new subject. The maxim of the
author of _Modern Antiquity_, that
"True genius is the ray that flings
A novel light o'er common things,"
has seldom been better illustrated than by this life of Sterling. The
facts are most of them neither new nor of a nature in themselves to
excite any very strong interest, but the details of the life are told
with such simplicity, and yet with such constant reference to the grand
educational process which they collectively make up, that one seems
listening to a narrative by Sterling's guardian angel, loving enough to
sympathize in the smallest minutiæ, and wise enough to see in each of
them the greatness of the crowning result. Nor is this impression in
the least impaired by the insignificance of the sum total of Sterling's
actual achievements. For had they been tenfold greater than they were,
they would have been as nothing in the presence of that which Mr.
Carlyle looks to as the soul's great achievement--heroic nobleness of
struggle and a calm abiding of the issue. After noticing the purity of
Sterling's character, and his conformity to "the so-called moralities,"
his biographer goes on to say:
"In clear and perfect fidelity to Truth wherever found, in
childlike and soldierlike, pious and valiant loyalty to the
Highest, and what of good and evil that might send him,--he
excelled among good men. The joys and the sorrows of his lot he
took with true simplicity and acquiescence. Like a true son,
not like a miserable mutinous rebel, he comported himself in
this Universe. Extremity of distress--and surely his fervid
temper had enough of contradiction in this world,--could not
tempt him into impatience at any time. By no chance did you
ever hear from him a whisper of those mean repinings, miserable
arraignings and questionings of the Eternal Power, such as
weak souls even well disposed will sometimes give way to in
the pressure of their despair; to the like of this he never
yielded, or showed the least tendency to yield;--which surely
was well on his part. For the Eternal Power, I still remark,
will not answer the like of this, but silently and terribly
accounts it impious, blasphemous, and damnable, and now as
heretofore will visit it as such. Not a rebel but a son, I
said; willing to suffer when Heaven said, Thou shalt;--and
withal, what is perhaps rarer in such a combination, willing to
rejoice also, and right cheerily taking the good that was sent,
whensoever or in whatever form it came.
"A pious soul we may justly call him; devoutly submissive to
the will of the Supreme in all things: the highest and sole
essential form which Religion can assume in man, and without
which all forms of religion are a mockery and a delusion in
man."
Every one not personally acquainted with Sterling will feel that
the great interest of the book is in the light thrown by it on Mr.
Carlyle's own belief. For good or evil, Mr. Carlyle is a power in the
country; and those who watch eagerly the signs of the times have their
eyes fixed upon him. What he would have us leave is plain enough,
and that too with all haste, as a sinking ship that will else carry
us--state, church, and sacred property--down along with it. But whither
would he have us fly? Is there firm land, be it ever so distant? or is
the wild waste of waters, seething, warring round as far as eye can
reach, our only hope? the pilot-stars, shining fitfully through the
parting of the storm-clouds, our only guidance? There are hearts on
this land almost broken, whose old traditional beliefs, serving them
at least as moral supports, Mr. Carlyle and teachers like him have
undermined. Some betake themselves to literature, as Sterling did; some
fill up the void with the excitement of politics; others feebly bemoan
their irreparable loss, and wear an outward seeming of universal irony
and sarcasm. Mr. Carlyle has no right, no man has any right, to weaken
or destroy a faith which he cannot or will not replace with a loftier.
We have no hesitation in saying, that the language which Mr. Carlyle
is in the habit of employing towards the religion of England and of
Europe is unjustifiable. He ought to have said nothing, or he ought to
have said more. Scraps of verse from Goethe, and declamations, however
brilliantly they may be phrased, are but a poor compensation for the
slightest obscuring of "the hope of immortality brought to light by
the gospel," and by it conveyed to the hut of the poorest man, to
awaken, his crushed intelligence and lighten the load of his misery.
Mr. Carlyle slights, after his contemptuous fashion, the poetry of his
contemporaries: one of them has uttered in song some practical wisdom
which he would do well to heed:
"O thou that after toil and storm
May'st seem to have reached a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
"Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
"Her faith through form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good.
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
"See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And even for want of such a type."
This life of Sterling will be useful to the class whose beliefs
have given way before Mr. Carlyle's destroying energies; because it
furnishes hints, not to be mistaken though not obtrusive, as to the
extent to which they must be prepared to go if they would really be
his disciples. If the path has in its very dangers an attraction for
some, while others are shudderingly repelled, in either case the result
is desirable, as it is the absence of certainty which causes the pain
and paralyzes the power of action. At any rate, the doctrines of this
teacher must be so much more intelligible to the mass when applied,
as they are here, in commentary upon a life all whose details are
familiar, because it is the life of a contemporary and a countryman,
that all who read must inevitably be impressed with that great lesson
of the philosophic poet--
"The intellectual power through words and things
Goes sounding on, _a dim and perilous way_."
Though John Sterling is of course the principal figure in the
composition, and Mr. Carlyle's treatment the great attraction of the
book, yet the figures in the background will be those to make most
impression on the general reader. Coleridge stands there in striking
but caricatured likeness; and even his most devoted admirers will not
be sorry to see a portrait of their master by such a hand: and all
will curiously observe the contrast between the sarcastic bitterness
which colors the drawing of the philosophic Christian, and the kindly
allowance through which the character of John Sterling's father, the
famous "Thunderer" of the _Times_, is delineated. We half suspect that
Coleridge would have appeared to Mr. Carlyle a much greater man, if he
had allowed him to declaim--"Harpocrates-Stentor," as Sterling calls
him--with trumpet voice and for time unlimited on the divine virtues of
Silence. There are besides, as in all Mr. Carlyle's works, passages of
wise thought expressed in most felicitous language: of which not the
least important is this advice given to Sterling in reference to his
poetic aspirations:
"You can speak with supreme excellence; sing with considerable
excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not,
beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech; an Age
incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till
these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings
readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical
psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of
battle. Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking
or writing man it has: Oh speak to me, some wise intelligible
speech; your wise meaning, in the shortest and clearest way;
behold, I am dying for want of wise meaning, and insight into
the devouring fact: speak, if you have any wisdom! As to song
so-called, and your fiddling talent,--even if you have one,
much more if you have none,--we will talk of that a couple of
centuries hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be
thrice welcome; but only when Troy is _taken_: alas, while the
siege lasts, and battle's fury rages every where, what can I do
with the Homer? I want Achilleus and Odysseus, and am enraged
to see them trying to be Homers!--"
These bricks from Babylon convey but scanty intimation of the varied
interest of the book. However the readers of it may differ from its
opinions, they cannot but find, even in Mr. Carlyle's misjudgments and
prejudices, ample matter for serious reflection: for if he misjudges,
it is generally because he is looking too intently at a single truth,
or a single side of a truth; and such misjudgments are more suggestive
than the completest propositions of a less earnest, keen-sighted, and
impassioned thinker. He is indeed more a prophet than a logician or
a man of science. And one lesson we may all learn from this, as from
everything he writes,--and it is a lesson that interferes with no
creed,--that honesty of purpose, and resoluteness to do and to say the
thing we believe to be the true thing, will give heart to a man's life,
when all ordinary motives to action and all ordinary supports of energy
have failed like a rotten reed.
SONGS OF THE CASCADE.
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
BY A. OAKEY HALL.
I.
THE CASCADE VAUNTETH ITSELF.
Over my pebbly bed I flow:
Till foaming--now splashing,
Soon leaping--then dashing
Into the chasm's bowl below,
Where my pearl drops glittering,
Rival the driven snow.
The chains of Winter I spurn!
All Summer and Spring
Through the grove I sing,
Gladdening lily and fern,
And the tired bird who kisses my cheek
With a dainty touch of his thirsty beak.
And when from the mountain side
The sunshines of May
Charm the snows away--
The torrent's impulsive tide
Mingles its turbid strength with mine,
Marking the thicket with surging line.
Then as the grove I enter,
The tree-tops shake,
The granite beds quake,
Into their very centre;
Whilst the birds around on the soaking ground
Hush their song at my thunder sound!
Man never with puny arm
_My_ power shall curb,
_My_ flow disturb!
Ha! ha! for nature's charm:
Powerful in the rock
That human strength doth mock!
Long as stern Father Time
Shall harvest future years--
Garnering joys and tears--
In every land and clime:
So long shall I from the moss-clad steep,
Bubble or vaunt in the foaming leap!
II.
THE CASCADE HUMBLETH ITSELF.
Under the dams I go,
With sullen plash,
And humbled dash,
On giant wheels below,
That proudly turn where huge fires burn,
Mocking the sunset glow!
As the "feeders" I enter,
High windows shake,
And brick walls quake,
Deep to their very centre,
While _I_ painfully sob to the taunting throb
In the heart of my mill tormentor.
Afar up the arid hill,
Huger wheels are turning--
Fiercer fires are burning--
The mountain torrent is still!
And I mourn me now for the thicket's green
In the grove where our surging line was see.
Man with his stalwart arms,
Plying the axe and spade--
Reft the grove of its shade,
Dissolving nature's charms;
With genius to plan it blasted the granite,
As involving the earthquake's aid.
Nothing of freedom now I know!
For the glare of the brick,
The machinery click,
And the mist from the wheels below,
Blindeth and stunneth--I faint--I reel.
I yield my charm to the spell of steel!
HERMAN MELVILLE'S WHALE.[4]
The new nautical story by the always successful author of _Typee_, has
for its name-giving subject a monster first introduced to the world
of print by Mr. J. N. Reynolds, ten or fifteen years ago, in a paper
for the _Knickerbocker_, entitled _Mocha Dick_. We received a copy
when it was too late to review it ourselves for this number of the
_International_, and therefore make use of a notice of it which we find
in the London _Spectator_:
"This sea novel is a singular medley of naval observation, magazine
article writing, satiric reflection upon the conventionalisms of
civilized life, and rhapsody run mad. So far as the nautical parts are
appropriate and unmixed, the portraiture is truthful and interesting.
Some of the satire, especially in the early parts, is biting and
reckless. The chapter-spinning is various in character; now powerful
from the vigorous and fertile fancy of the author, now little more than
empty though sounding phrases. The rhapsody belongs to wordmongering
where ideas are the staple; where it takes the shape of narrative or
dramatic fiction, it is phantasmal--an attempted description of what
is impossible in nature and without probability in art; it repels the
reader instead of attracting him.
[4] The Whale. By Herman Melville, Author of "Typee," "Omoo,"
"Redburn," "Mardi," "White Jacket." In three volumes. Published by
Bentley.
[Moby Dick, or the Whale: By Herman Melville: 1 vol. 12mo. New-York,
Harper & Brothers.]
"The elements of the story are a South Sea whaling voyage, narrated
by Ishmael, one of the crew of the ship Pequod, from Nantucket. Its
'probable' portions consist of the usual sea matter in that branch of
the industrial marine; embracing the preparations for departure, the
voyage, the chase and capture of whale, with the economy of cutting
up, &c., and the peculiar discipline of the service. This matter is
expanded by a variety of digressions on the nature and characteristics
of the sperm whale, the history of the fishery, and similar things,
in which a little knowledge is made the excuse for a vast many words.
The voyage is introduced by several chapters in which life in American
seaports is rather broadly depicted.
"The 'marvellous' injures the book by disjointing the narrative, as
well as by its inherent want of interest, at least as managed by Mr.
Melville. In the superstition of some whalers, (grounded upon the
malicious foresight which occasionally characterizes the attacks of
the sperm fish upon the boats sent to capture it,) there is a _white_
whale which possesses supernatural power. To capture or even to hurt
it is beyond the art of man; the skill of the whaler is useless; the
harpoon does not wound it; it exhibits a contemptuous strategy in its
attacks upon the boats of its pursuers; and happy is the vessel were
only loss of limb, or of a single life, attends its chase. Ahab, the
master of the Pequod--a mariner of long experience, stern resolve, and
indomitable courage, the high hero of romance, in short, transferred
to a whale-ship--has lost his leg in a contest with the white whale.
Instead of daunting Ahab, the loss exasperates him; and by long
brooding over it his reason becomes shaken. In this condition, he
undertakes the voyage; making the chase of his fishy antagonist the
sole abject of his thoughts, and, so far as he can without exciting
overt insubordination among his officers, the object of his proceedings.
"Such a groundwork is hardly natural enough for a regular-built novel,
though it might form a tale, if properly managed. But Mr. Melville's
mysteries provoke wonder at the author rather than terror at the
creation; the soliloquies and dialogues of Ahab, in which the author
attempts delineating the wild imaginings of monomania, and exhibiting
some profoundly speculative views of things in general, induce
weariness or skipping; while the whole scheme mars, as we have said,
the nautical continuity of story--greatly assisted by various chapters
of a bookmaking kind.
"Perhaps the earliest chapters are the best although they contain
little adventure. Their topics are fresher to English readers than
the whale-chase, and they have more direct satire. One of the leading
personages in the voyage is Queequeg, a South Sea Islander, that
Ishmael falls in with at New-Bedford, and with whom he forms a bosom
friendship.
"Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and
South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
"While yet a new-hatched savage, running wild about his native
woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he
were a green sapling,--even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul lurked
a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen
whaler or two. His father was a high chief, a king; his uncle a high
priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of
unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins--royal
stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he
nourished in his untutored youth.
"A Sag Harbour ship visited his father's bay; and Queequeg sought a
passage to Christian lands. But the ship having her full complement of
seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence
could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled
off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when
she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other
a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets, that grew out
into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets,
with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand;
and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out--gained
her side--with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his
canoe--climbed up the chains--and throwing himself at full length upon
the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go though
hacked in pieces.
"In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard--suspended
a cutlass over his naked wrists: Queequeg was the son of a king,
and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and
his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented,
and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young
savage--this sea Prince of Whales--never saw the captain's cabin. They
put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But, like
the Czar Peter content to toil in the ship-yards of foreign cities,
Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might haply gain
the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom--so
he told me--he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the
Christians the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they
were, and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the
practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be
both miserable and wicked, infinitely more so than all his father's
heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbour, and seeing what the
sailors did there, and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they
spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for
lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians: I'll die a
Pagan.
"The strongest point of the book is its 'characters.' Ahab, indeed,
is a melodramatic exaggeration, and Ishmael is little more than a
mouthpiece; but the harpooners, the mates, and several of the seamen,
are truthful portraitures of the sailor as modified by the whaling
service. The persons ashore are equally good, though they are soon lost
sight of. The two Quaker owners are the author's means for a hit at the
religious hypocrisies. Captain Bildad, an old sea-dog, has got rid of
every thing pertaining to the meeting-house save an occasional 'thou'
and 'thee.' Captain Peleg, in American phrase, 'professes religion.'
The following extract exhibits the two men when Ishmael is shipped:
"I began to think that it was high time to settle with myself
at what terms I would be willing to engage for the voyage. I
was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no
wages, but all hands, including the captain, received certain
shares of the profits, called _lays_; and that these lays
were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to
the respective duties of the ship's company. I was also aware
that, being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be
very large: but, considering that I was used to the sea, could
steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt
that, from all I had heard, I should be offered at least the
two hundred and seventy-fifth lay--that is, the two hundred and
seventy-fifth part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage,
whatever that might eventually amount to. And though the two
hundred and seventy-fifth lay was what they called a rather
_long lay_, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had a
lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would
wear out on it, not to speak of my three years' beef and
board, for which I would not have to pay one stiver.
"It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate
a princely fortune: and so it was, a very poor way indeed.
But I am one of those that never take on about princely
fortunes, and am quite content if the world is ready to board
and lodge me while I am putting up at this grim sign of the
Thunder-cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the two hundred
and seventy-fifth lay would be about the fair thing, but would
not have been surprised had I been offered the two hundredth,
considering I was of a broad-shouldered make.
"But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful
about receiving a generous share of the profits, was this:
ashore, I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his
unaccountable old crony Bildad; how that they, being the
principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore the other and
more in considerable and scattered owners left nearly the whole
management of the ship's affairs to these two. And I did not
know but that the stingy old Bildad might have a deal to say
about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board
the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his
Bible, as if at his own fireside. Now, while Peleg was vainly
trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my
no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested
party in these proceedings--Bildad never heeded us, but went
on mumbling to himself out of his book, '_Lay_ not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth--'
"'Well, Captain Bildad,' interrupted Peleg, 'what d'ye
say--what lay shall we give this young man?'
"'Thou knowest best,' was the sepulchral reply; 'the seven
hundred and seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much--would
it--'where moth and rust do corrupt, but _lay_--'
"Lay indeed, thought I, and such a lay!--the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I,
for one, shall not _lay_ up many _lays_ here below, where moth
and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly _long lay_ that,
indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might
at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration
will show that, though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a
pretty large number, yet when you come to make a _teenth_
of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and
seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than
seven hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons. And so I
thought at the time.
"'Why, b---- t your eyes, Bildad!' cried Peleg, 'thou dost not
want to swindle this young man! he must have more than that?'
"'Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,' again said Bildad,
without lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling--'for where
your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'
"'I am going to put him down for the three hundredth,' said
Peleg; 'do ye hear that, Bildad? The three hundredth lay, I
say.'
"Bildad laid down his book, and, turning solemnly towards
him, said, 'Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but
thou must consider the duty thou owest to the other owners of
this ship--widows and orphans, many of them; and that, if we
too abundantly reward the labors of this young man, we may be
taking the bread from those widows and those orphans. The seven
hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg.'
"'Thou Bildad!' roared Peleg, starting up, and clattering about
the cabin, 'B---- t ye, Captain Bildad; if I had followed thy
advice in these matters, I would afore now had a conscience to
lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the largest
ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn.'
"'Captain Peleg,' said Bildad steadily, 'thy conscience may be
drawing ten inches of water or ten fathoms--I can't tell; but
as thou art still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly
fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one, and will in the
end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg,'"
"It is a canon with some critics that nothing should be introduced into
a novel which it is physically impossible for the writer to have known:
thus, he must not describe the conversation of miners in a pit if they
_all_ perish. Mr. Melville hardly steers clear of this rule, and he
continually violates another, by beginning in the autobiographical form
and changing _ad libitum_ into the narrative. His catastrophe overrides
all rule: not only is Ahab, with his boat's-crew, destroyed in his last
desperate attack upon the white whale, but the Pequod herself sinks
with all on board into the depths of the illimitable ocean. Such is the
go-ahead method."
A STORY WITHOUT A NAME[5]
WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE
BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.
CHAPTER L.
Sir Philip Hastings, I have said, was reading a Greek book when Mr.
Short entered the library. His face was grave, and very stern; but all
traces of the terrible agitation with which he had quited the side of
his wife's death-bed, were now gone from his face. He hardly looked
up when the surgeon entered. He seemed not only reading, but absorbed
by what he read. Mr. Short thought the paroxysm of grief was passed,
and that the mind of Sir Philip Hastings, settling down into a calm
melancholy, was seeking its habitual relief in books. He knew, as every
medical man must know, the various whimsical resources to which the
heart of man flies, as if for refuge, in moments of great affliction.
The trifles with which some will occupy themselves--the intense
abstraction for which others will labor--the imaginations, the visions,
the fancies to which others again will apply, not for consolation, not
for comfort; but for escape from the one dark predominant idea. He said
a few words to Sir Philip then, of a kindly but somewhat commonplace
character, and the baronet looked up, gazing at him across the
candles which stood upon the library table. Had Mr. Short's attention
been particularly called to Sir Philip's countenance, he would have
perceived at once, that the pupils of the eyes were strangely and
unnaturally contracted, and that from time to time a certain nervous
twitching of the muscles curled the lip, and indented the cheek. But he
did not remark these facts: he merely saw that Sir Philip was reading:
that he had recovered his calmness; and he judged that that which might
be strange in other men, might not be strange in him. In regard to what
he believed the great cause of Sir Philip's grief, his wife's death,
he thought it better to say nothing; but he naturally concluded that
a father would be anxious to hear of a daughter's health under such
circumstances, and therefore he told him that Emily was better and more
composed.
[5] Concluded from page 499.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R.
James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New-York.
Sir Philip made a slight, but impatient motion of the hand, but Mr.
Short went on to say, "As she was so severely and terribly affected,
Sir Philip, I have given Mistress Emily a composing draught, which has
already had the intended effect of throwing her into profound slumber.
It will insure her, I think, at least six, if not seven hours of calm
repose, and I trust she will rise better able to bear her grief than
she would be now, were she conscious of it."
Sir Philip muttered something between his teeth which the surgeon
did not hear, and Mr. Short proceeded, saying, "Will you permit me
to suggest, Sir Philip, that it would be better for you too, my dear
sir, to take something which would counteract the depressing effect of
sorrow."
"I thank you, sir, I thank you," replied Sir Philip, laying his
hand upon the book; "I have no need. The mind under suffering seeks
medicines for the mind. The body is not affected. It is well--too well.
Here is my doctor;" and he raised his hand and let it fall upon the
book again.
"Well then, I will leave you for to-night, Sir Philip," said the
surgeon; "to-morrow I must intrude upon you on business of great
importance. I will now take my leave."
Sir Philip rose ceremoniously from his chair and bowed his head; gazing
upon the surgeon as he left the room and shut the door, with a keen,
cunning, watchful look from under his overhanging eyebrows.
"Ha!" he said, when the surgeon had left the room, "he thought to
catch me--to find out what I intended to do--slumber!--calm, tranquil
repose--so near a murdered mother! God of heaven!" and he bent down his
head till his forehead touched the pages of the book, and remained with
his face thus concealed for several minutes.
It is to be remarked that not one person, with a single exception, to
whom the circumstances of Lady Hastings' death were known, even dreamed
of suspecting Emily. They all knew her, comprehended her character,
loved her, had faith in her, except her own unhappy father. But with
him, if the death of his unhappy wife were terrible, his suspicions
of his daughter were a thousand fold more so. To his distorted vision
a multitude of circumstances brought proof all powerful. "She has
tried to destroy her father," he thought, "and she has not scrupled
to destroy her mother. In the one case there seemed no object. In the
other there was the great object of revenge, with others perhaps more
mean, but not less potent. Try her cause what way I will, the same
result appears. The mother opposes the daughter's marriage to the man
she loves--threatens to frustrate the dearest wish of her heart--and
nothing but death will satisfy her. This is the end then of all these
reveries--these alternate fits of gloom and levity. The ill balanced
mind has lost its equipoise, and all has given way to passion. But what
must I do--oh God! what must I do?"
His thoughts are here given, not exactly as they presented themselves;
for they were more vague, confused, and disjointed; but such was
the sum and substance of them. He raised his head from the book and
looked up, and after thinking for a moment or two he said, "This
Josephus--this Jew--gives numerous instances, if I remember right, of
justice done by fathers upon their children--ay, and by the express
command of God. The priest of the Most High was punished for yielding
to human weakness in the case of his sons. The warrior Jephtha spared
not his best beloved. What does the Roman teach? Not to show pity to
those the nearest to us by blood, the closest in affection, where
justice demands unwavering execution. It must be so. There is but the
choice left, to give her over to hands of strangers, to add public
shame, and public punishment to that which justice demands, or to do
that myself which they must inevitably do. She must die--such a monster
must not remain upon the earth. She has plotted against her father's
life--she has colleagued with his fraudulent enemies--she has betrayed
the heart that fondly trusted her--she has visited secretly the haunts
of a low, vulgar ruffian--she has aided and abetted those who have
plundered her own parents--she has ended by the murder of the mother
who so fondly loved her. I--I am bound, by every duty to society, to
deliver it from one, who for my curse, and its bane, I brought into the
world. She must be put to death; and no hand but mine must do it."
He gazed gloomily down upon the table for several minutes, and then
paced the room rapidly with agony in every line of his face. He wrung
his hands hard together. He lifted up his eyes towards heaven, and
often, often, he cried out, "Oh God! Oh God! Is there no hope?--no
doubt?--no opening for pause or hesitation?"
"None, none, none," he said at length, and sank down into his chair
again.
His eye wandered round the room, as if seeking some object he could not
see, and then he murmured, "So beautiful--so young--so engaging--just
eighteen summers; and yet such a load of crime!"
He bent his head again, and a few drops of agony fell from his eyes
upon the table. Then clasping his forehead tight with his hand, he
remained for several minutes thoughtful and silent. He seemed to grow
calmer; but it was a deceitful seeming; and there was a wild, unnatural
light in his eyes which, notwithstanding all the apparent shrewdness of
his reasoning--the seeming connection and clearness of his argument,
would have shown to those expert in such matters, that there was
something not right within the brain.
At length he said to himself in a whisper, as if he was afraid that
some one should hear him, "She sleeps--the man said she sleeps--now is
the time--I must not hesitate--I must not falter--now is the time!" and
he rose and approached the door.
Once, he stopped for a moment--once, doubt and irresolution took
possession of him. But then he cast them off, and moved on again.
With a slow step, but firm and noiseless tread, he crossed the hall and
mounted the stairs. No one saw him: the servants were scattered: there
was no one to oppose his progress, or to say, "Forbear!"
He reached his daughter's room, opened the door quietly, went in, and
closed it. Then he gazed eagerly around. The curtains were withdrawn:
his fair, sweet child lay sleeping calmly as an infant. He could see
all around. Father and child were there. There was no one else.
Still he gazed around, seeking perhaps for something with which to do
the fatal deed! His eye rested on a packet of papers upon the table. It
contained those which Marlow had left with poor gentle Emily to justify
her to her father in case of need.
Oh, would he but take them up! Would he but read the words within!
He turns away--he steals toward the bed!
Drop the curtain! I can write no more.
Emily is gone!
CHAPTER LI.
When Mr. Short, the surgeon, left the presence of Sir Philip Hastings,
he found the butler seated in an arm-chair in the hall, cogitating
sadly over all the lamentable events of the day. He was an old servant
of the family, and full of that personal interest in every member of it
which now, alas, in these times of improvement and utilitarianism (or
as it should be called, selfishness reduced to rule), when it seems to
be the great object of every one to bring men down to the level of a
mere machine, is no longer, or very rarely, met with. He rose as soon
as the surgeon appeared, and inquired eagerly after his poor master. "I
am afraid he is touched here, sir," he said, laying his finger on his
forehead. "He has not been at all right ever since he came back from
London, and I am sure, when he came down to-night, calling out in such
a way about gathering herbs, I thought he had gone clean crazy."
"He has become quite calm and composed now," replied Mr. Short; "though
of course he is very sad: but as I can do no good by staying with
him, I must go down to the farm for my horse, and ride away where my
presence is immediately wanted."
"They have brought your horse up from the farm, sir," said the butler.
"It is in the stable-yard."
Thither Mr. Short immediately proceeded, mounted, and rode away. When
he had gone about five miles, or perhaps a little more, he perceived
that two horsemen were approaching him rapidly, and he looked sharp
towards them, thinking they might be Mr. Atkinson and the groom. As
they came near, the outlines of the figures showed him that such was
not the case; but the foremost of the two pulled up suddenly as he was
passing, and Marlow's voice exclaimed, "Is that Mr. Short?"
"Yes, sir, yes, Mr. Marlow," replied the surgeon. "I am very glad
indeed you have come; for there has been terrible work this day at the
house of poor Sir Philip Hastings. Lady Hastings is no more, and----"
"I have heard the whole sad history," replied Marlow, "and am riding as
fast as possible to see what can be done for Sir Philip, and my poor
Emily. I only stopped to tell you that Mrs. Hazleton has been taken,
the vial of medicine found upon her, and that she has boldly confessed
the fact of having poisoned poor Lady Hastings. You will find her and
Atkinson, the high constable, at the house of Mrs. Warmington.--Good
night, Mr. Short; good night;" and Marlow spurred on again.
The delay had been very short, but it was fatal.
When Marlow reached the front entrance of the court, he threw his rein
to the groom, and without the ceremony of ringing, entered the house.
There was a lamp burning in the hall, which was vacant; but Marlow
heard a step upon the great staircase, and looked up. A dark shadowy
figure was coming staggering down, and as it entered the sphere of
the light in the hall, Marlow recognized the form, rather than the
features, of Sir Philip Hastings. His face was ashy pale: not a trace
of color was discernible in any part: the very lips were white; and the
gray hair stood ragged and wild upon his head. His haggard and sunken
eye fell upon Marlow; but he was passing onward to the library, as if
he did not know him, tottering and reeling like a drunken man, when
Marlow, very much shocked, stopped him, exclaiming, "Good God, Sir
Philip, do you no know me?"
The unhappy man started, turned round and grasped him tightly by the
wrist, saying in a hoarse whisper, and looking over his shoulder
towards the staircase, "Do not go there, do not go there--come
hither--you do not know what has happened."
"I do, indeed, Sir Philip," replied Marlow in a soothing tone, "I have
heard----"
"No, no, no, no!" said Sir Philip Hastings. "No one knows but I--there
was no one there--I did it all myself.--Come hither, I say!" and he
drew Marlow on towards the library.
"He has lost his senses," thought Marlow. "I must try and soothe him
before I see my poor Emily. I will try and turn his mind to other
things;" and, suffering himself to be led forward, he entered the
library with Sir Philip Hastings, who instantly cast himself into a
chair, and pressed his hands before his eyes.
Marlow stood and gazed at him for a moment in silent compassion, and
then he said, "Take comfort, Sir Philip. Take comfort. I bring you
a great store of news; and what I have to tell will require great
bodily and mental exertions from you, to deal with all the painful
circumstances in which you are placed. I have followed out every thread
of the shameful conspiracy against you--not a turning of the whole
rascally scheme is undiscovered."
"She had her share in that too," said Sir Philip, looking up in his
face, with a wild, uncertain sort of questioning look.
"I know it," replied Marlow, thinking he spoke of Mrs. Hazleton, "She
was the prime mover in it all."
Sir Philip wrung his hands tight, one within the other, murmuring "Oh,
God; oh, God!"
"But," continued Marlow, "she will soon expiate her crimes; for she
has been taken, and proofs of her guilt found upon her, so strong and
convincing, that she did not think fit even to conceal the fact, but
confessed her crime at once."
Sir Philip started, and grasped both the arms of the chair in which he
sat, tight in his thin white hands, gazing at Marlow with a look of
bewildered horror that cannot be described. Marlow went on, however,
saying, "I had previously told her, indeed, that I had discovered
all her dark and treacherous schemes--how she had labored to make
this whole family miserable--how she had attempted to blacken the
character of my dear Emily--imitated her handwriting--induced you to
misunderstand her whole conduct, and thrown dark hints and suspicions
in your way. She knew that she could not escape this charge, even if
she could conceal her guilt of to-day, and she confessed the whole."
"Who--who--who?" cried Sir Philip Hastings, almost in a scream. "Of
whom are you talking, man?"
"Of Mrs. Hazleton," replied Marlow. "Were you not speaking of her?"
Sir Philip Hastings stretched forth his hands, as if to push him
farther from him; but his only reply was a deep groan, and, after a
moment's pause, Marlow proceeded, "I thought you were speaking of
her--of her whose task it has been, ever since poor Emily's ill-starred
visit to her house, to calumniate and wrong that dear innocent girl--to
make you think her guilty of bitter indiscretions, if not great
crimes--who, more than any one, aided to wrong you, and who now openly
avows that she placed the poison in your poor wife's room in order to
destroy her."
"And I have killed her!--and I have killed her!" cried Sir Philip
Hastings, rising up erect and tall--"and I have killed her!"
"Good God, whom?" exclaimed Marlow, with his heart beating as if it
would burst through his side. "Whom do you mean, sir?"
Sir Philip remained silent for a moment, pressing his hands tight upon
his temples, and then answered in a slow, solemn voice, "Your Emily--my
Emily--my own sweet--" but he did not finish the sentence; for ere the
last words could be uttered, he fell forward on the floor like a dead
man.
For an instant, stupified and horror-struck, Marlow remained
motionless, hardly comprehending, hardly believing what he had heard.
The next instant, however, he rushed out of the library, and found the
butler with the late Lady Hastings' maid, passing through the back of
the house towards the front staircase.
"Which is Emily's room?" he cried,--"Which is Emily's room?"
"She is asleep, sir," said the maid.
"Which is her room?" cried Marlow, vehemently. "He is mad--he is
mad--your master is mad--he says he has killed her. Which is her room?"
and he darted up the staircase.
"The third on the right, sir," cried the butler, following with the
maid, as fast as possible; and Marlow darted towards the door.
A fit of trembling, however, seized him as he laid his hand upon the
lock. "He must have exaggerated," he said to himself. "He has been
unkind--harsh--he calls that killing her--I will open it gently," and
he and the two servants entered it nearly together.
All was quiet. All was still. The light was burning on the table. There
was a large heavy pillow cast down by the side of the bed, and the bed
coverings were in some disorder.
No need of such a stealthy pace, Marlow! You may tread firm and boldly.
Even your beloved step will not wake her. The body sleeps till the
day of judgment. The spirit has gone where the wicked cease from
troubling, and the weary are at rest.
The beautiful face was calm and tranquil; though beneath each of
the closed eyes was a deep bluish mark, and the lips had lost their
redness. The fair delicate hands grasped the bed-clothes tightly,
and the whole position of the figure showed that death had not taken
place without a convulsive struggle. Marlow tried, with trembling
hands, to unclasp the fingers from the bed-clothes, and though he
could not do it, he fancied he felt warmth in the palms of the hands.
A momentary gleam of hope came upon him. More assistance was called:
every effort that could be suggested was made; but it was all in vain.
Consciousness--breath--life--could never be restored. There was not a
dry eye amongst all those around, when the young lover, giving up the
hopeless task, cast himself on his knees by the bedside, and pressed
his face upon the dead hand of her whom he had loved so well.
Just at that moment the voice of Sir Philip Hastings was heard below
singing a stanza of some light song. It was the most horrible sound
that ever was heard!
Two of the servants ran down in haste, and the sight of the living was
as terrible as that of the dead. Philip Hastings had recovered from
his fit without assistance, had raised himself, and was now walking
about the room with the same sort of zigzag, tottering step with which
he had met Marlow on his return. A stream of blood from a wound which
he had inflicted on his forehead when he fell, was still pouring down
his face, rendering its deathlike paleness only the more ghastly. His
mouth was slightly drawn aside, giving a strange sinister expression
to his countenance; but from his eyes, once so full of thought and
intellect, every trace of reason had vanished. He held his hands before
him, and the fingers of the one beat time upon the back of the other to
the air that he was singing, and which he continued to sing even after
the entrance of the servants. He uttered not a word to them on their
appearance: he took not the slightest notice of them till the butler,
seeing his condition, took him by the arm, and asked if he had not
better go to bed.
Then, Sir Philip attempted to answer, but his words when spoken were
indistinct as well as confused, and it became evident that he had a
stroke of palsy. The servants knew hardly what to do. Marlow they did
not dare to disturb in his deep grief: the surgeon was by this time far
away: their mistress, and her fair unhappy daughter were dead: their
master had become an idiot. It was the greatest possible relief to them
when they beheld Mr. Dixwell the clergyman enter the library. Some boy
employed about the stables or the kitchen, had carried down a vague
tale of the horrors to the Rectory; and the good clergyman, though
exhausted with all the fatigues and anxiety of the day, had hurried
down at once to see what could be done for the survivors of that doomed
family. He comprehended the situation of Sir Philip Hastings in a
moment; but he put many questions to the butler as to what preceded
the terrible event, the effects of which he beheld. The old servant
answered little. To most of the questions he merely shook his head
sadly; but that mute reply was sufficient; and Mr. Dixwell, taking Sir
Philip by the hand, said, "You had better retire to rest, sir--you are
not well."
Sir Philip Hastings gave an unmeaning smile, but followed the clergyman
mildly, and having seen him to a bedroom, and left him in the hands of
his servants, Mr. Dixwell turned his step towards the chamber of poor
Emily.
Marlow had risen from his knees; but was still standing by the bedside
with his arms folded on his chest. His face was stern and sorrowful;
but perfectly calm.
Mr. Dixwell approached quietly, and in a melancholy tone, addressed
to him some words of consolation--commonplace enough indeed, but well
intended.
Marlow laid his hand upon the clergyman's arm, and pointed to Emily's
beautiful but ghastly face. He only added, "In vain!--Do what is
needful--Do what is right--I am incapable;" and leaving the room, he
descended to the library, where he closed the door, and remained in
silence and solitude till day broke on the following morning.
CHAPTER LII.
Mrs. Warmington became a person of some importance with the people
of Hartwell. All thoughts were turned towards her house. Everybody
wished they could get in and see and hear more; for the news had spread
rapidly and wide, colored and distorted; but yet falling far short
of the whole terrible truth. When Mr. Short himself arrived in town,
he found three other magistrates had already assembled, and that Mr.
Atkinson and Sir Philip Hastings' groom, John, were already giving them
some desultory and informal information as to the apprehension of Mr.
Hazleton and its causes. The first consideration after his appearance
amongst them, was what was to be done with the prisoner; for one of the
justices--a gentleman of old family in the county, who had not much
liked the appointment of the surgeon to the bench, and had generally
found motives for differing in opinion with him ever since--objected
to leaving Mrs. Hazleton, even for the night, in any other place than
the common jail. The more merciful opinion of the majority, however,
prevailed. Atkinson gave every assurance that the constable whom he
had placed in charge of the lady was perfectly to be depended upon,
and that the room in which she was locked up, was too high to admit
the possibility of escape. Thus it was determined that Mrs. Hazleton
should be left where she was for the night, and brought before the
magistrates for examination at an early hour on the following morning.
Even after this decision was come to, however, the conversation or
consultation, if it may be so called, was prolonged for some time in a
gossiping, idle sort of way. Gentlemen sat upon the edge of the table
with their hats on, or leaned against the mantelpiece, beating their
boots with their riding-whips, and some marvelled, and some inquired,
and some expounded the law with the dignity and confidence, if not with
the sagacity and learning of a Judge. They were still engaged in this
discussion when the news of Emily's death was brought to Hartwell,
and produced a painful and terrible sensation in the breasts of the
lightest and most careless of those present. The man who conveyed the
intelligence brought also a summons to Mr. Short to return immediately
to Sir Philip Hastings, and only waiting to get a fresh horse, the
surgeon set out upon his return with a very sad and sorrowful heart. He
would not disturb Mr. Marlow; though he was informed that he was in the
library; but he remained with Sir Philip Hastings himself during the
greater part of the night, and only set out for his own house to take a
little repose before the meeting of the magistrates, some quarter of an
hour before the first dawn of day.
Full of painful thoughts he rode on at a quick pace, till the yellow
and russet hues of the morning began to appear in the east. He then
slackened his pace a little, and naturally, as he approached the house
of Mrs. Warmington, he raised his eye towards the windows of the room
in which he knew that the beautiful demon, who had produced so much
misery to others and herself, had been imprisoned.
Mr. Short was riding on; but suddenly a sound met his ear, and as his
eyes ran down the building from the windows above, to a small plot
of grass which the lady of the house called the lawn, he drew up his
horse, and rode sharply up to the gate.
But it is time now to turn to Mrs. Hazleton. Lodged in the upper
chamber which had been decided upon as the one fittest for their
purpose, by Mr. Atkinson and the rest, with the constable from Hartwell
domiciled in the ante-room, and the door between locked, Mrs. Hazleton
gave herself up to despair; for her state of mind well deserved that
name, although her feelings were very different from those which are
commonly designated by that name. Surely to feel that every earthly
hope has passed away--to see that further struggle for any object of
desire is vain--to know that the struggles which have already taken
place have been fruitless--to feel that their objects have been base,
unworthy, criminal--to perceive no gleam of light on either side of
the tomb--to have the present a wilderness, the future an abyss, the
past and its memories a hell--surely this is despair! It matters not
with what firmness, or what fierceness it may be borne: it matters not
what fiery passions, what sturdy resolutions, what weak regrets, what
agonizing fears, mingle with the state. This is despair! and such was
the feeling of Mrs. Hazleton. She saw vast opportunities, a splendid
position in society, wealth, beauty, wit, mind, accomplishments, all
thrown away, and for the gratification of base passions exchanged for
disgrace, and crime, and a horrible death. It was a bad bargain; but
she felt she had played her whole for revenge and had lost; and she
abode the issue resolutely.
All these advantages which I have enumerated, and many more, Mrs.
Hazleton had possessed; but she wanted two things which are absolutely
necessary to human happiness and human virtue--heart and principle. The
one she never could have obtained; for by nature she was heartless. The
other might have been bestowed upon her by her parents. But they had
failed to do so; for their own proper principles had been too scanty
for them to bestow any on their daughter. Yet, strange to say, the lack
of heart somewhat mitigated the intensity of the lady's sufferings now.
She felt not her situation as bitterly as other persons with a greater
portion of sensibility would inevitably have done. She had so trained
herself to resist all small emotions, that they had in reality become
obliterated. Fiery passions she could feel; for the earthquake rends
the granite which the chisel will not touch, and these affected her now
as much as ever.
At that very moment, as she sat there, with her head resting on her
hand, what is the meaning of that stern, knitted brow, that fixed,
steadfast gaze forward, that tight compression of the lips and teeth?
At that moment Nero's wish was in the bosom of Mrs. Hazleton. Could
she have slaughtered half the human race to blot out all evidence of
her crimes, and to escape the grinning shame which she knew awaited
her, she would have done it without remorse. Other feelings, too, were
present. A sense of anger at herself for having suffered herself to
be in the slightest degree moved or agitated by any thing that had
occurred; a determined effort, too, was there--I will not call it
a struggle--to regain entire command of herself--to be as calm, as
graceful, as self-possessed, as dignified as when in high prosperity
with unsullied fame. It might be, in a certain sense, playing a part,
and doubtless the celebrated Madame Tiquet did the same; but she was
playing a part for her own eyes, as well as those of others. She
resolved to be firm, and she was firm. "Death," she said, "is before
me: for that I am prepared. It cannot agitate a nerve, or make a limb
shake. All other evils are trifles compared with this. Why then should
I suffer them to affect me in the least? No, no, they shall not see me
quail!"
After she had thus thought for some two hours, gaining more and more
self-command every moment, as she turned and returned all the points
of her situation in her own mind, and viewed them in every different
aspect, she rose to retire to rest, lay down, and tried to sleep. At
first importunate thought troubled her. The same kind of ideas went
on--the same reasonings upon them--and slumber for more than one hour
would not visit her eyelids. But she was a very resolute woman, and
at length she determined that she would not think: she would banish
thought altogether; she would not let the mind rest for one moment upon
any subject whatsoever; and she succeeded. The absence of thought is
sleep; and she slept; but resolution ended where sleep begun, and the
images she had banished waking, returned to the mind in slumber. Her
rest was troubled. Growing fancies seemed to come thick upon her mind;
though the eyes remained closed, the features were agitated; the lips
moved. Sometimes she laughed; sometimes she moaned piteously; sometimes
tears found their way through her closed eyelids; and sobs struggled in
her bosom.
At length, between three and four o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Hazleton
rose up in bed. She opened her eyes, too; but there was a dull glassy
look about them--a fixed leaden stare, not natural to her waking hours.
Slowly she got out of bed, approached the table, took up a candle
which she had left burning there, and which was now nearly down to the
socket, and walked straight to the door, saying aloud, "Very dark--very
dark--every thing is dark."
She tried the door, but found it locked; and the constable slept on.
She then returned to the table, seated herself, and for some five or
ten minutes continued to twist her long hair round her fingers. She
then rose again, and went straight to the window, threw it up, and
seemed to look out. "Chilly--chilly," she said. "I must walk to warm
myself."
The sill of the window was somewhat high, but that was no obstacle; for
there was a chair near, and Mrs. Hazleton placed it for herself with as
much care as if she had been wide awake. When this was done she stepped
lightly upon it, and put her knee upon the window-sill, raised herself
suddenly upright, and struck her head sharply against the upper part of
the window. It is probable that the blow woke her, but at all events it
destroyed her balance, and she fell forward at once out of the window.
There was a loud shriek, and then a deep groan. But the constable slept
on, and no one knew the fate that had befallen her 'till Mr. Short, the
surgeon, passing the house, was attracted to the spot where she had
fallen, by a moan, and the sight of a white object lying beneath the
window.
A loud ringing of the bell, and knocking at the door, soon roused the
inhabitants of the house, and the mangled form of Mrs. Hazleton was
carried in and stretched upon a bed. She was not dead; and although
almost every bone was broken, except the skull, and the terrible
injuries she had received precluded all possibility of recovery, she
regained her senses before three o'clock of the same day, and continued
to linger for somewhat more than a fortnight in agonies both of mind
and body, too terrible to be described. With the rapid, though gradual
weakening of the corporeal frame, the powers of the mind became
enfeebled--the vigorous resolution failed--the self-command abandoned
her. Half an hour's death she could have borne with stoical firmness,
but a fortnight's was too much. The thoughts she could shut out in
vigorous health, forced themselves upon her as she lay there like a
crushed worm, and the tortures of hell got hold upon her, long before
the spirit departed. Yet a sparkle of the old spirit showed itself
even to her last hour. That she was conscious of an eternity, that
she was convinced of after judgment, of the reward of good, and of
the punishment of evil, that she believed in a God, a hell, a heaven,
there can be no doubt--indeed her words more than once implied it--and
the anguish of mind under which she seemed to writhe proved it. But
yet, she refused all religious consolation; expressed no penitence:
no sorrow for what she had done, and scoffed at the surgeon when he
hinted that repentance might avail her even then. It seemed that, as
with the earthly future, she had made up her mind at once, when first
detected, to meet her fate boldly; so with the judgment of the immortal
future, she was resolute to encounter it unbending. When urged, nearly
at her last hour, to show some repentance, she replied in the weak and
faltering voice of death, but in as determined a tone as ever, "It
is all trash. An hour's repentance could do no good even if I could
repent. But I do not. Nobody does repent. They regret their failure,
are terrified by their punishment; but they and I would do exactly the
same again if we hoped for success and impunity. Talk to me no more of
it. I do not wish to think of hell till it has hold upon me, if that
should ever be."
She said no more from that moment forward, and in about an hour after,
her spirit went to meet the fate she had so boldly dared.
But few persons remain to be noticed in this concluding chapter, and
with regard to their after history, the imagination of the reader might
perhaps be left to deal, without further information. A few words,
however, may be said, merely to give a clue to their after fate.
The prosecution of Mr. Shanks, the attorney, was carried on but
languidly, and it is certain that he was not convicted of the higher
offence of forgery. On some charge, however, it would seem he was
sentenced to two years imprisonment, and the last that is heard of him,
shows him blacking shoes at the inn in Carrington, then a very old man,
in the reign of George the First.
Sir Philip Hastings never recovered his senses, nor did he seem to have
any recollection of the horrible events with which his earthly history
may be said to have closed; but his life was not far extended. For
about six months he continued in the same lamentable state in which
we have last depicted him, sometimes singing, sometimes laughing, and
sometimes absorbed in deep melancholy. At the end of that period,
another paralytic stroke left him in a state of complete fatuity, from
which in two years he was relieved by death.
If the reader will look into the annals of the reign of Queen Anne he
will find frequent mention in the campaigns of Marlborough and Eugene,
of a Major, a Colonel, and a General Marlow. They were all the same
person; and they will find that officer often reported as severely
wounded. I cannot trace his history much farther; but the genealogies
of those times show, that in 1712, one Earl of Launceston died at the
age of eighty-seven, and was succeeded by the eighth Earl, who only
survived three years, and the title with him became extinct, as it
is particularly marked that he died unmarried. As this last of the
race is distinguished by the title of Lieutenant-General, the Earl of
Launceston, there can be no doubt that this was the lover and promised
husband of poor Emily Hastings.
It is a sad tale, and rarely perhaps has any such tragedy darkened
the page of domestic history in England. A whole family were swept
away, and most of those connected with them, in a very short space
of time; but it is not the number of deaths within that period that
gives its gloominess to the page--for every domestic history is little
but a record of deaths--but the circumstances. Youth, beauty, virtue,
gentleness, kindness, honor, integrity, punctilious rectitude: reason,
energy, wisdom, sometimes, nay often, have no effect as a screen, from
misfortune, sorrow, and death. Were this world all, what a frightful
chaos would human life be. But the very sorrows and adversities of the
good, prove that there is a life beyond, where all will be made even.
THE END.
From Bentley's Miscellany.
CALCUTTA.
There are in Calcutta four colleges established by Government, besides
numerous other institutions for the diffusion of learning. Education,
indeed, is very general in the metropolis, and there are but few, even
among the natives, making any pretensions to respectability, who have
not some acquaintance with European literature. I have heard as pure
English spoken by Hindoos in Calcutta as by men of rank in London, and
pieces from our poets recited by a lad of color with a correctness of
diction and eloquence that would have done credit to any of our youth
at home. Go where you will in Calcutta, enter the narrowest streets
and the most obscure alleys, and you will find pedagogues engaged in
teaching Pinnock or Goldsmith to the children, and ragged urchins of
three or four years old shouting in concert, B-l-a, bla; c-l-a, cla.
And then turn your eyes in an opposite direction; look at the wealthy
and the noble of mature age, enter their houses, and what will you
see and hear? You will see their dwellings furnished and their tables
laid out in _English_ style; you will see them possessed of libraries
composed of the best works of the most approved _English_ authors;
you will see _English_ newspapers regularly filed; you will see them
corresponding in _English_ with their friends and connections; and you
will hear them conversing on the topics of the day or their own private
affairs in the _English_ tongue. A person who had never travelled
beyond the metropolis would be apt, on seeing all this, to exclaim,
"The people will soon be thoroughly Anglicised!" But it is all confined
to Calcutta, and even there is rather, perhaps, the result of a wish to
outshine, than of a desire to improve.
A Mechanics' Institute was a few years since established in Calcutta.
Institutions of this kind are particularly required in India, where
the national systems of agriculture, commerce, mechanics, science,
literature, and philosophy are so wretched; where prejudice and
superstition impede improvement, and sloth and ignorance have had so
long a reign. It is surely the duty of those who seek affluence in
that country to encourage them, and thus endeavor to benefit the land
from whose resources they expect to gain it. But, in spite of the old
adage, "What's in a name?" the fate of this institution proved that
there is something very important in the nomenclature of a thing. The
title "Mechanic" is in a manner _despised_ by the European community
of Calcutta and their Euratian brethren; and so long as the Institute
continued to bear the title which distinguished it as dedicated to
such, notwithstanding the plainness with which it exhibited its claims
to support as an institution calculated to disseminate a correct and
practical knowledge of science, and a familiar acquaintance with
the fine arts throughout the empire, and by the improvements such a
knowledge would induce ulteriorly to promote the interests of all
connected with India; notwithstanding appeals to the press, public
lectures and private solicitations; notwithstanding the most brilliant
speeches of the most eloquent orators (among whom may be particularly
mentioned Mr. George Thompson), it languished for want of support,
gradually decayed, and seemed about to yield up the ghost. It was
at last suggested, that though the expedients above alluded to had
failed to stay the progress of disease, or invigorate the system,
one, powerful as a galvanic battery, yet remained to be tried, a new
nomenclature. It was proposed that the vulgar title of "Mechanics'
Institute" should be thrown off, and the elegant and euphonious one of
"The Lyceum" adopted. This was done; and wonderful was the effect. The
young and tender tree revived in an instant, refreshing streams of cash
were poured in abundance upon its roots; the very nobles of the land
came forward to tend it, and now it flourishes and blooms, and promises
ere long to produce a rich abundance of fruit. Still it is in reality
the same as before in all but its name.
I have alluded to Mr. George Thompson. His arrival in India in 1843
was greeted by all classes of the community with joy. All had heard of
his eloquence and his ability, of the interest he had exhibited in the
affairs of, and his design in visiting, India, and therefore hailed him
as the champion of her interests. Hindoo and Mussulman flocked eagerly
around the standard he raised as a patriot leader, listened to his
addresses, and, as he enlarged on their rights and wrongs (so far as he
knew them) felt discontent, hatred to the rulers of their country, and
bold resolutions to free it from their tyranny, rising within them. The
press lauded and flattered him; invitations overwhelmed him; patriotic
societies rose from nonentity at his presence; and his person and
character were themes of inquiry and constant disquisition; imitative
would-be orators sprang up in multitudes, and poured forth torrents
of anger and abuse against Government, and all was excitement, all
radicalism. Suddenly the man on whom the eyes of the people were fixed
as their instructor and guide left the metropolis, and when he again
appeared in it, did so in the character of ambassador from the Great
Mogul. With what abuse he then met, let the periodicals of the day
testify. "Where now," it was asked, "are his magniloquent professions
of philanthropy, his self-devotedness, and his zeal in the cause of
India?"
In India, as in England, the public appetite for the drama seems to
have been satiated. There is a very elegant theatre in Calcutta, but
it is now closed. It languished for want of support, though several
talented performers were attached to it. Mrs. Leach, its founder and
greatest ornament, was an exquisite actress. A Miss Cowley and a Miss
Baxter, too, were both superior and elegant actresses. The latter
preserved the theatre to the community on a former occasion, when it
seemed about to fall. A circumstance, as true as it is laughable,
connected with this theatre, occurred in 1841. Two ladies, engaged in
England for it, and sent out, were actually entered among the "imports
manifest" for the port of Calcutta, as goods consigned to the manager
of the playhouse!
The newspaper is as necessary an adjunct to the breakfast table in
Calcutta as it is in London. The military man looks eagerly for
accounts from the north-west; turns to the lists of promotions and
staff appointments, and forgets not to cast his eye at the obituary;
the civilian searches for the advertisements which announce fresh
arrivals of horses from Persia, Burmah, and Arabia; spinsters' and
oilmen's stores from England; and wines and fruits from France; just
glancing at the drafts of laws about to be enacted, and conning over
the programme of the next races; and the merchant studies the accounts
relative to indigo, sugar, and saltpetre. But the greatest excitement
prevails when the mail from England is due. How eagerly is it looked
for, and when it arrives, how are its contents scanned and analyzed!
There are six English newspapers published in Calcutta and its
neighborhood. The editors are all men of experience and talent, who
know how to suit the appetites of their customers. An English reader,
however, taking up one of our Indian newspapers, would think it a very
dull affair, for he would find one-third of it editorial and local
news, another third advertisements, and the remainder, extracts from
the London magazines. Now this is what just suits the Anglo-Indians.
The advertisements tell them what to do with their money, the residue
informs them of what is going on, and gives them the very pith of
literature without putting them to the trouble of cutting it from the
crust.
The Indian press has been stigmatized in England as a "licentious," a
"rascally," and an "unscrupulous" one. This is very far from being the
case. It has its faults, but they are not of such a kind. Indeed, it
seems to me, that in point of purity, honesty, and morality, it may
challenge comparison with the press of Great Britain itself, and most
decidedly it possesses a powerful influence with the executive. It has
been the means, within the last few years, of causing the abolition
of lotteries, the appointment of deputy magistrates, and many other
measures tending to the moralization and welfare of the country. It
scans and fearlessly criticises the acts of Government; it shows a
spirit of active benevolence in pleading the cause of the injured, to
whatever class they may belong; and proves itself impartially just.
In addition to newspapers several magazines and other periodicals
are published in Calcutta. The whole of the periodical publications
amount in number to forty. A Quarterly Review has lately been added to
those, and also a Magazine, the intended publication of which, and its
character, were announced in so curious a manner, that I shall copy
the advertisement at full length for the benefit of the reader: "In
the press, and will be published on the 1st of July, and continued
monthly, a new periodical, entitled, The British India Magazine,
and Daily and Monthly Treasury, a most useful Writing and Reading
Table Manual of Reference, Memoranda, Expenditure, and Literature,
to which is added a Precis of the News of the past month, Political,
Fashionable, Social, Commercial, Humorous, and Scientific. It is
equally adapted for ladies in general, as for Gentlemen of the Civil,
Military, and Uncovenanted Services, Members of the Legal and Medical
Professions, Merchants, Indigo and Sugar Planters, and Planters'
Assistants, Captains and Officers of Ships, Clerks in Mercantile
Houses, &c., or in fact, for all Persons by whom due order and
regularity in the expenditure of their Time and Income is considered an
object worthy of notice. It is compiled upon a method perfectly novel
in the annals of the Press, be it American, Asiatic, or European, and
may be had (per dak) in all parts of British India."
There, dear reader, match that in Europe, if you can! "Why this is
a real Vade Mecum; and, mark you! a _most_ useful one--one equally
adapted for ladies in general as for gentlemen, or in fact for _all_
persons." Doubtless it will have a prodigious circulation as soon as
its merits are fully known. I have not met with any one who has read it.
Books published in India, whatever may be their nature, seldom repay
the cost of print and paper. Even the Calcutta newspapers have between
them all no more than three or four thousand subscribers, and yet our
countrymen there read a great deal. But the works which have emanated
from the pens of Anglo-Indian writers have in general been so dull and
spiritless, that the community has learned to regard all such with
indifference; and as the booksellers regularly supply the newest and
best European productions, these inferior viands are almost entirely
neglected. An annual has once or twice been published, but did not meet
with sufficient patronage to allow of its being regularly continued.
The police of India has always been inefficient. Robberies committed
under the very noses of the watchmen are common. When they should be
on the look-out, they are found sleeping, and when they are awake are
careless and negligent. The worst of them in all India are to be found
in its great metropolis; in Calcutta, indeed, they seem to possess
no honesty or fidelity, and often turn out greater rogues than those
they bring to justice. Policemen in the confidence of the European
authorities have before now been discovered to be at the head of
parties of Thugs, to whom they have thus had the means of communicating
all necessary intelligence.
The native _employés_ in our courts of justice are equally corrupt.
Every Hindoo and Mussulman who has occasion to resort to these courts,
takes with him a bribe, knowing that unless he does so, it will be
all but impossible for him to obtain a fair and impartial hearing.
The _omlah_ who should decline a bribe, would be accounted a fool by
his fellow officials. And so some of them make fortunes; _e. g._, a
_sheristader_ at one of our civil courts, who had been only ten years
in that office, on a salary of one hundred rupees a month, and with
no other income save a trifling share in a small patrimonial estate,
managed, a short time back, to purchase landed property to the value of
fifty thousand rupees.
Enter a criminal court, whether the deponent swear by the water of
the Ganges held in his hand, or by the Koran laid on his head, or by
licking off salt from a sword, or by placing a milk-jug on his back,
or any other mode practised among them, you will find that perjury and
the grossest exaggeration are with him far more common than truth. If
he has received a light box or a gentle kick, he will make oath that he
has been half murdered; and if he has been robbed of an article worth
twenty rupees, will swear its value was a hundred!
A judge has seldom a more conflicting mass of evidence before him
on which to decide the merits of a case, than he has who seeks by
investigating the principles and conduct of this people to form an
opinion of their general character. It seems to me that, as a nation,
there is no other people so profligate, so licentious and avaricious,
so addicted to lying, dishonesty, procrastination, gossip, and
perpetual egotism, so servile, so litigious, and so filthy; and no
other so barren of nearly every good quality. Their code of morality,
to judge from their practice, is a huge mass of every thing bad,
mingled with a few almost imperceptible grains of some things that are
good.
In India, when we look around us and see the fertility of the earth,
the abundance of grain and fruit it produces, we feel astonished that
those engaged in agriculture should be, as they really are, almost
destitute of a bare subsistence. The Irish peasantry are rarely so
badly off as those of Hindostan. Inquiry shows us this is the result of
a system prevailing throughout the country, the oppression of the ryots
by the Zemindars. Yes, it is not the taxes, which are comparatively
light, that cause this evil, but the exactions of the rich natives
from the poor ones. The peasantry have no money, they require advances
to enable them to cultivate, these are granted to them at the most
exorbitant rate of usury by the landlords, and as the one party never
gets out of debt, so the other never ceases its extortions.
Thus the poor are kept poor. The personal property of a peasant seldom
exceeds three or four shillings in value. His wardrobe consists of a
piece of coarse cloth, just large enough to gird round his body, a
similar piece thrown across the shoulders, and a skull-cap or turban,
made of long strips of the same material. And as for his household
goods, a few drinking vessels, an earthen jar, an iron plate, and a
rickety bedstead comprise in general the whole.
Very little attention is paid in Calcutta, or anywhere else in India,
to home politics. Indeed they are never discussed at table. Let a man
have been ever so violent a Tory or zealous a Whig, six months in India
will generally find him, so far as his discourse can testify, neuter.
One reason of this is, that if he should attempt to introduce political
subjects in conversation, he would not be listened to. It is only when
India and Indian interests are concerned, that even a powerful debate
in the House meets with the slightest attention. Theatricals, races,
retiring funds, public characters, civil and military appointments,
these, and such like subjects, form the ordinary topics of discourse.
And you may always know when a man has lived any time in India,
for a little of the Eastern spice is sure to be found in all his
conversation. He cannot conceal it.
An anecdote was one day related to me, which exemplifies the sad
condition of those habitual consumers of opium, many of whom are to
be found among the natives. A Hindoo gentleman, who was accustomed
to indulge in it, being about to remove to a distant and almost
uninhabited province, in which he knew it would be difficult to
procure opium, laid in a large quantity of it to take with him, and
made arrangements for having more regularly forwarded. Soon after his
arrival at his destination, one of his servants decamped, robbing him
of a large amount in money, and a variety of other articles, among
which his entire stock of opium was included. The period at which he
expected his first auxiliary supply was yet distant; but he immediately
sent for a quantity to his agent; as this however did not arrive for a
considerable time, he was at a loss for his usual stimulant, pined away
in a few days for want of it, and in less than a fortnight died.
There are numerous low chop-houses and taverns in Calcutta, to which
our poorer countrymen resort, and these are the nests of profligacy and
licentiousness. Impositions too, of the grossest and most atrocious
nature, are practised by the proprietors of some, on those who frequent
them.
While in the country I made one of a small party at an annual festival,
given by the native officers of a Government establishment in the
neighborhood. The worthy _baboo_, who was at the head of the concern,
had resolved to prepare for the half-dozen Europeans whom he expected
to honor the feast with their presence, two things, of which most
_Feringees_ approve, viz., a _pillau_ and a bottle of brandy. Being a
Hindoo, however, he had substituted pieces of cheese for meat in the
stew, thinking, no doubt, that it would make but little difference to
us. Of course, we could not touch it; but we did not mind its loss, as
the _aqua vitæ_ yet remained. The master of the ceremonies, however,
had forgotten to provide a corkscrew. In this emergency one of our
number offered to save the trouble of sending for one by knocking
off the neck of the bottle with the butt of his riding-whip. This he
attempted, but, missing his aim, broke the bottle and spilt all the
liquor. It was too late to send for more, and, as we did not find any
thing else to our relish, we came away after all, much to the vexation
of our host, without having tasted either bit or drop.
How different in the effects they produce on the heart, and in the
sentiments they awaken, are the various seasons of the year in India to
the same in our native land. How sweetly speaks the changing year to
the minds of the unsophisticated and innocent of England's children!
Are their hearts oppressed by misfortune? with the spring they revive,
and, like nature, shake off the torpor into which, overcome by their
sorrows, they were sinking, while Hope, with the flowers, buds once
more sweetly forth. The summer sun brings with it cheerfulness and
joy; hearts and hopes together expand; they watch, with anxiety and
pleasure, the ripening of the dainty fruits, which promise in autumn to
replenish their board; they sport in the new-mown and perfume-exhaling
fields; they bathe in the clear, unruffled stream, and feel convinced
that earth has not yet been despoiled by sin of all its charms, that
there are pursuits at once pure and delightful, that man is not made
to mourn but to rejoice, and that in nature, the beneficence of the
Deity is demonstrated. Even stern winter has something pleasant in his
countenance, and is kind enough to make them sometimes long for his
return while enjoying the smiles of seasons more congenial; for they
with rapture anticipate a meeting with the friends whom he assembles;
the sweet congratulations, the merry tales, the laughter-exciting
songs, which will then burst forth from affectionate and happy hearts,
and make the blazing hearth a scene of unalloyed ecstasy. But it is not
thus in the arid and joyless East. We watch the approach of spring with
apprehension, for it brings in its train disease and death; we shrink,
and seek in the mountains a refuge from the fiery temper and scorching
breath of summer; autumn's gloom makes all nature distasteful to us;
and winter, though it affords a temporary relief from pain, is totally
unproductive of pleasure.
During the early part of his Indian career, the military officer in the
Hon. Company's service, finds that nearly all the labor, though but a
small share of the honor or profit, of sustaining our hardly-earned
reputation, falls on his shoulders, and on those of his comrades. The
honor is almost entirely engrossed, and what little falls to his share
is entirely eclipsed by that allotted to his superiors in rank; the
income he derives from his position is insignificant when compared
with that of his contemporaries of the civil service. The civilian, it
is well known, has a far better chance of making a fortune in twenty,
than the soldier in forty years. From the period of his arrival in
the country, until after having studied and passed an examination
in the Hindee and Persian languages, he is reported qualified for
the public service, and receives an appointment; the former enjoys a
salary superior to that which is paid to the latter as the allowance
of an ensign or cornet. The military man cannot obtain any staff
employ which affords an augmentation of pay until he shows himself
well qualified in the native languages. Then again, the civilian, if
he manifest any ability, may, in ten or twelve years, rise to a high
and lucrative post; whereas the poor scarlet-coated hero, unless he
have the good fortune to get a quarter-master, or interpreter-ship, or
to be appointed an aid-de-camp, has to vegetate on two hundred rupees
_per mensem_, for some thirteen or fourteen years, when he may receive
an additional hundred with a lieutenancy. Supposing him, however, to
have obtained a good snug berth, his income will be a trifle when
compared with that of the civilian, who escaped from the school-bench
at the same time as himself, while he is always exposed to changes and
inconveniences of which the latter knows nothing. But the sub has one
comfort amidst all this: "In due time," thinks he, "I may hope to be a
general."
"Hope told a flattering tale,"
is, however, the exclamation of many an old veteran in his declining
years; and still oftener is it the sorrowful evidence of those who
live to mourn over the early extinction of even the most brilliant
prospects entertained by youthful relatives, who have fallen a prey to
the inclemencies of a climate which their constitutions were unfitted
to sustain.
But, after all, fortunes are not now-a-days made, even by the most
_fortunate_ of our countrymen, so easily as they were some fifty,
or even thirty years ago. Nor are we even worthy of comparison with
the natives of India in this respect. On the station of Cawnpore are
now residing the two sons of a man who, report says, was nothing
more than a common _bobarchee_, or cook, in the household of the
late king of Lucknow, but who, by his skill in spicing wine, and
manufacturing peculiarly delicious draughts of an inebriating nature,
attracted the notice of his majesty, a man of licentious and depraved
habits, accounted an orthodox Mussulman, but exceedingly fond of
the bottle. The monarch having tasted a sample of his _bobarchee's_
elixir, to reward his skill and encourage his merit, presented him
with a situation near the royal person, and as, while holding this
appointment, he continued to afford him the highest satisfaction,
advanced him step by step, and at length, on a vacancy occurring, as a
mark of his especial favor, gave him the post of prime minister.
This office he continued to hold until his master's decease; and in
the mean time obtained so great an influence with the monarch that his
majesty is said to have been little better than an automaton, whose
movements were regulated by his hand. His chief object, like that of
all his countrymen, being to amass wealth, he tyrannized over the
people, and left no stone unturned beneath which he deemed it possible
that wealth might be discovered. One mode of "raising the wind" was
frequently practised by him. A merchant, or other rich man, having just
completed the erection of a large and magnificent abode, in which to
spend luxuriously the remainder of his days, the minister would forward
to him an official dispatch, intimating that the spot on which he had
built must be immediately cleared for state purposes, and that no
compensation would be given him.
Astonished and perplexed at such a notice from an authority it was
useless to dispute, the unfortunate victim would, perhaps, endeavor, by
pointing out some other eligible spot for the presumed purpose of the
government, and offering a _muzzur_ of, it may be, ten thousand rupees,
to avert the threatened calamity; but to no purpose, for the wily man,
who had risen from the office of a slave to the highest post under the
crown, would at first accept of no terms. The petitioner, therefore,
turned away in despair, and went back to his house, to which, after a
few hours, an emissary of the minister would follow him with a message,
intimating that should any thing worthy his acceptance be presented to
the premier in his private character, he would use his influence with
the king to have the order revoked. Elated with this apparent chance of
escape, the unlucky individual thus destined to be "squeezed" would,
perhaps, offer a sum larger than the minister had anticipated. But
even this was sure to be indignantly refused, and not until the victim
had been visited over and over again, and no hope of any larger offer
remained, would the bribe be accepted. Thus, and by a variety of other
means, the _bobarchee_ gathered a vast amount of wealth. On the death
of the monarch who had so blindly favored and elevated him, he fared
but poorly, however, for the new king threw him into prison. It was now
_his_ turn to bribe, and a timely present of fifty lacs of rupees to an
influential person procured his release. Even then he had an immense
fortune remaining, and thinking it best to secure both his person and
his money against further annoyance and depredation, he left Lucknow,
and settled down in our dominions.
While residing in Calcutta, I was brought into frequent contact with
individuals belonging to the Eurasian or half-caste population, and as
comparatively little is known of this class of people in England, I
shall here make a few remarks on their character.
They are generally the descendants of European fathers by native
mothers. The great majority of them are of Portuguese, many of British,
and some of French extraction. Altogether they form a community by
themselves, as distinct from the European society around them as
from the Hindoos and Mahommedans. They do not travel; here they live
and multiply, marrying generally among themselves. As they are daily
increasing in number, they will, of course, in time become so numerous
as to consider themselves a nation, and to demand a place in history.
Should such, however, be the case, I do not think they will occupy a
very high position in the scale of nations. Great talent (I will not
mention _genius_) and sterling abilities seem very scarce amongst them.
They devote no attention to the cultivation of the arts, they manifest
no zeal in the pursuits of science, no independence, no brotherly
feeling towards each other. The females, at best, receive but a
superficial education, it generally extending only to reading, writing,
and the mechanical performance of music, dancing, and ornamental
needlework, and in none of these do they show any extraordinary skill.
As girls they are flirts and coquettes; as women they are vain, idle,
and slovenly.
Let me be candid, however. I have found among the Eurasians men
possessing a versatility of talent that would do honor to any
of our own countrymen, and females adorned with every grace and
accomplishment. But such characters are very, _very_ scarce.
From Sharpe's Magazine
REVOLUTIONS OF RUSSIA
THE ACCESSION OF NICHOLAS I., 1825.
FROM THE FRENCH OF ALEXANDER DUMAS.
The death of the Emperor Alexander placed the inhabitants of his
empire in mourning; for the grief and loyalty of the lower classes
were sincere, and their attachment to his person almost idolatrous in
its character. The public feeling was increased by the prospect of
the reign of an unpopular sovereign afflicted with mental malady, and
devoid of courtesy.
As for the Grand-duke Nicholas, no one thought of him, but the Russian
people dreaded the accession of Constantine, whom they considered their
sovereign in right of his primogeniture. In no country in the world
has this natural law been so repeatedly broken. Every person in Russia
was aware that the heir-presumptive had purchased his marriage with a
Polish lady, the object of his ardent affections, by the resignation
of his claims to the succession, but that he would abide by that act
seemed a conjecture too improbable to be entertained by any one.
Constantine was nevertheless sincere when he abandoned his rights, and
he hastened to assure his next brother that he was so, by his youngest
brother the Grand-duke Michael, through whom he forwarded a letter
confirming his resignation of the throne, and acknowledging his next
brother as his sovereign. The courier from St. Petersburg crossed the
Grand-duke Michael, and brought letters from Nicholas acknowledging
Constantine as his Emperor, and urging him to ascend the throne. The
wife of Constantine joined her entreaties to those of the next heir,
and with rare devotion offered to resign her consort rather than that
should give up the empire for her. Constantine, over whose mental
agonies the soothing influence of the fair Pole possessed a magical
power, continued firm in his resolution to remain in the condition of
a subject, and he adhered to the determination he had expressed in the
important document of which the Grand-duke Michael was the bearer, and
which is here subjoined:
"MY VERY DEAR BROTHER,--I received yesterday, with feelings of profound
sorrow, intelligence of the death of our adored sovereign, and my
benefactor, the Emperor Alexander. In hastening to assure you of the
painful feelings this misfortune has excited in my mind, I do only
my duty in announcing to you that I have forwarded to her Imperial
Majesty, our august mother, a letter, in which I declare, that in
consequence of the rescript I obtained from the late Emperor, bearing
date February the 2d, 1822, permitting my renunciation of the throne,
it is now my unalterable determination to give up to you all my rights
to the Empire of Russia. I entreated, at the same time, our beloved
mother, to make this declaration public, that the same may be put into
immediate execution. After this declaration, I regard it as a sacred
duty to beseech your Imperial Majesty to receive the first from me,
the oath of fidelity and submission, and to permit me to say that I do
not aspire to any other title or dignity than that of Czarowitz, with
which my august father deigned to honor my services. My solo happiness,
hereafter, will consist in giving your Imperial Majesty continual
proofs of my unbounded devotion and respect for your person, of which
thirty years of constant and zealous service to the Emperors, my father
and brother, are the pledge, in which sentiments I wish to serve your
Imperial Majesty, and your successors, until the end of my life, in my
present situation and functions.
"I am, with the most profound respect,
"CONSTANTINE."
Upon the receipt of the dispatches which followed this letter, the
Grand-duke, called to reign over a vast Empire, by the repeated
abdication of his brother of the rights of primogeniture, no longer
hesitated,--he published the former correspondence between the Emperor
Alexander and the Grand-duke Constantine, with the document already
quoted upon the 25th of December, 1825, and fixed the morrow for his
recognition as their sovereign by his people.
The inhabitants of St. Petersburg, relieved from their dread of a
second Paul by the abdication of the heir-presumptive, began to
reflect with hope upon the promise which the talents and pure moral
character of their new sovereign afforded them. The handsomest and
bravest man in his dominions, his fine person attracted attention, and
his reserved manners excited awe. His grave carriage, his downcast
look, only raised to penetrate to the soul the man who ventured to
observe him, with a glance which compelled him to know and reverence
his master--his haughty manner of interrogation, so unlike the suavity
of Alexander, or the bluntness of Constantine, had isolated him from
the rest of the imperial family, and centred him in the bosom of his
own domestic circle. The Russian people, feeling their need of a guide,
at once comprehended that the cold dignity of this prince concealed an
indomitable will, and that, if they themselves had not chosen their new
sovereign, God had considered their need, and given to the Russians,
who were at once too polished and too barbarous, a man who would grasp
the sceptre in an iron hand covered with a velvet glove.
The morrow, though considered as a day of joy and festivity, was
preceded by some rumors that, like the breath of an approaching
tempest, gave warning that some great national crisis was at hand. It
was whispered in the evening of the 25th that the abdication of the
Czarowitz was a forgery, and that Constantine, then exercising the
authority of Viceroy of Poland, was on full march for St. Petersburg
with an army to claim the empire as his birthright. In addition to this
startling rumor, it was said that several regiments, and among them
that of Moscow, had determined to take the oath to no Russian prince
but Constantine; and the words, "Let Nicholas live, but let Constantine
reign," were heard at intervals in the streets as an intimation of the
state of the military pulse.
In fact, the conspiracy which had disturbed the last days of the
Emperor Alexander was about to raise its head, and seize upon the
Great-Duke Constantine's name as its rallying point. This Prince, who
had passed his life with the army, was beloved by the soldiers, and
the conspirators, who understood little of the character of their
new sovereign, supposed the revolt of the regiments stationed in St.
Petersburg would compel him to resign his recently acquired rights.
They would then summon Constantine to receive the empire, and with it
the constitution they had prepared. If he refused to accept it, they
intended to imprison him and the rest of the imperial family. They
would then establish a republic, an oligarchy in which the despotism of
the many would replace the despotism of one. Such was the design of a
party composed of military aristocrats, who, bolder than the murderers
of Paul, dared, by open force and secret fraud, to contest the throne
of Russia with its new sovereign. The soldiers, devoted to Constantine,
they designed to make their blind instruments in a conspiracy of which
that Prince was not the real object, but their own aggrandisement.
Faithful to their plans, the Prince Stah---- and the two Bes---- went
to the barracks of the 2d, 3d, 5th and 6th companies of the Regiment of
Moscow, whom they knew to be devoted to Constantine. The Prince then
informed these men that they were deceived respecting the abdication
of the Czarowitz, and pointed out Alexander B---- to their attention,
whom he affirmed had been sent from Warsaw to warn them against taking
the oath to the Grand-duke Nicholas. The address of Alexander B----,
confirming this astounding communication, excited a great sensation
among the troops, of which the Prince took advantage by ordering
them to load and present. At that instant the Aide-de-camp Verighny
and Major-General Fredericks, who commanded the grenadiers, having
the charge of the flag, came to invite the officers to visit the
colonel of the regiment. Prince Stah----, who believed the favorable
moment was come, ordered the soldiers to repulse the grenadiers with
_coup-de-crosses_, and to take away their flag, at the same time
throwing himself upon Major-General Fredericks, whom B----, on the
other side, menaced with a pistol, with the stock of which he felled
him to the earth; then, turning upon Major Schenshine, commander of
the brigade, who ran to the assistance of his colleague, he knocked
him down in a moment, and flinging himself among the grenadiers,
successively wounded Grenadier Krassoffski, Colonel Khavosschinski,
and Subaltern Moussieff; and cutting his way to the flag, seized and
elevated it with a loud and triumphant hurrah. To that cry, and to the
sight of the blood so boldly shed to win the flag, the greater part
of the regiment replied, "Long live Constantine! down with Nicholas!"
Prince Stah----, followed by four hundred men whom he had seduced from
their duty, then marched, with drums beating, to the Admiralty quarter.
At the gate of the winter palace, the aide-de-camp, the bearer of the
news of the revolt, encountered another officer, who brought tidings
from the barracks of the grenadier corps of equally alarming import.
When that regiment were preparing to take the oath of fidelity to the
Emperor Nicholas, the sub-lieutenant Kojenikoff threw himself before
the advanced-guard, exclaiming, "It is not to the Grand-duke Nicholas
we ought to make oath, but to the Emperor Constantine." He was told
that the Czarowitz had abdicated in his next brother's favor. "It is
false," was his reply; "totally false; he is on the march for St.
Petersburg to reward the faithful and punish the guilty."
The regiment, notwithstanding these outcries, continued its march,
took the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign, and returned into
quarters, without showing any disposition resembling revolt. At
dinner-time Lieutenant Suthoff, who had taken the pledge of obedience
with the rest, entered at that moment, and addressed himself to his
own company in a manner calculated to excite their attention: "My
friends, we were wrong to obey the order; the other regiments are in
open revolt; they have refused to take the oath, and are at this moment
in the Place of the Senate;--put on your uniforms, arm, come on, and
follow me; I have your pay in my pocket, which I am ready to distribute
without waiting for the ceremony of an order."
"But is what you say quite true?" cried many voices.
"Stay, here is Lieutenant Panoff,--like myself, one of your best
friends,--ask him."
"My friends," remarked Panoff, anticipating their question, "you all
know that Constantine is your only lawful emperor, and that they wish
to dethrone him."
"Live Constantine!" replied the soldiers.
"Live Nicholas!" exclaimed Colonel Sturler, the commander of the
regiment, throwing himself courageously into the hall. "They are
deceiving you, my friends; the Czarowitz has really abdicated, and you
have now no other emperor than the Grand-duke Nicholas. Live Nicholas!"
"Live Constantine!" responded the soldiers.
"You are mistaken, soldiers; you are about to take a fatal step; you
are deceived," again shouted the colonel.
"Comrades, do not abandon me; follow me," cried Panoff; "let those who
are for Constantine, unite with me in the cry, 'Long live Constantine!'"
More than three parts of those present joined in the cry of "Long live
Constantine!"
"To the Admiralty! to the Admiralty!" said Panoff, drawing his sword;
"follow me, soldiers, follow me."
With a wild hurrah two hundred soldiers followed their leader to the
place he indicated, whither, though by a different route, the insurgent
portion of the Regiment of Moscow had already preceded them.
Milarodowich, the military governor of St. Petersburg, a cavalry
general, whose splendid charges on the field had gained him the
appellation of the Russian Murat, was by this time at the palace, to
communicate to his new sovereign the dispositions he had made for the
defence of his throne and the capital. He had directed the troops upon
whose fidelity he thought he could rely, to march to the winter palace.
The first battalion of the regiment Preobrajenski, three regiments of
the guard Paulowski, and the battalion of the Sapper and Miners, were
those he considered fit for this important service.
The emperor saw then that the mutiny was more general than he
anticipated; he therefore sent by Major-general Meidhart, to carry
orders to the Semenowski guard to repress the mutineers, and to the
horse-guards, to hold themselves in readiness to mount. He went down
himself to the corps of chief guards of the winter palace, where the
regiment of Finland guards were at that time on duty, and ordered
them to load their muskets and invest the principal avenues of the
palace. At that very moment tumultuous sounds interrupted the voice
of the sovereign, occasioned by the approach of the third and sixth
companies of the Regiment of Moscow, headed by Prince Stah----, and
the two B----, with the captured flag proudly displayed to the wind,
and drums beating, to the ominous cry of "Long live Constantine! Down
with Nicholas!" The rebel troops debouched on the Admiralty Square,
but whether they thought themselves not sufficiently strong, or that
they dreaded facing majesty with these treasonable demonstrations,
they did not march upon the winter palace, but took up their position
against the senate, where they were immediately joined by the grenadier
corps, and sixty men in frocks with pistols in their hands, who mingled
themselves among the rebel soldiers.
The emperor at this crisis appeared from under one of the arches of
the palace, approached the grating, and threw a rapid glance on his
revolted subjects. He was paler than usual, but was composed and calm.
It was whispered that he had resolved to die as became a Christian
emperor, and that he had confessed and received absolution of the
Church, before he took leave of his family. Every eye was fixed upon
him, when the hard gallop of a squadron of cuirassiers was heard on the
side of the marble palace; it was the horse-guards, headed by Count
Orloff, one of the bravest and most faithful friends of the emperor.
Before him the gates expanded; he leaped from his charger, while
the regiment ranged itself before the palace. The roll of the drums
announced instantly the approach of the grenadiers of Preobrajenski,
which arrived in battalions. They entered the court of the palace,
where they found the emperor with the empress, and their eldest son,
the little Grand-duke Alexander; behind them were ranged the Chevalier
guard, who formed an angle with the cuirassiers, leaving between them
an open space, which was quickly filled up by the artillery. The
revolted regiments regarded these military dispositions with apparent
carelessness, while their cries of "Long live Constantine!" "Down with
Nicholas!" evidently proved that they expected, and waited there for
reinforcements.
While affairs were in this state at the palace, the Grand-duke Michael,
at the barracks, was opposing his personal influence to the flood-tide
of rebellion. Some happy results had followed these attempts, and the
bold resolution taken by Count Lieven, captain of the sixth company
of the Regiment of Moscow, who arrived in time to shut the gates
against the battalion, then about to join their rebel comrades. Placing
himself before the soldiers, he drew his sword, and swore on his
honor to pass the weapon through the body of the first man who should
make a seditious movement to re-open them. At this threat, a young
sub-lieutenant advanced, pistol in hand, towards Count Lieven, with the
evident intention of blowing out his brains. The count, with admirable
presence of mind, struck the officer a blow with the pummel of his
sword, which made the instrument leap from his hands; the lieutenant
took up the pistol and once more took aim at the count. The young
nobleman crossed his arms, and confronted the mutinous officer, while
the regiment, mute and motionless, looked on like the seconds of this
singular duel. The lieutenant drew back a few steps, followed by the
heroic count, who offered him his unarmed breast as if in defiance of
his attempt. The lieutenant fired, but the ball took no effect: that
it did not strike that generous breast appeared miraculous. Some one
knocked at the door.
"Who is there?" asked many voices.
"His Imperial Highness the Grand-duke Michael," replied those without.
Some instants of profound silence followed this announcement. Count
Lieven availed himself of the general stupefaction to open the door, no
person attempting to prevent that action.
The Grand-duke entered on horseback, followed by the officers of
ordnance.
"What means this inaction at a moment of danger?" asked the Grand-duke.
"Am I among traitors or loyal soldiers?"
"You are in the midst of the most faithful of your regiments," replied
the Count, "of which your Imperial Highness shall have immediate
proof." Then raising his drawn sword, he cried, "Long live the Emperor
Nicholas!"
"Long live the Emperor Nicholas!" shouted the soldiers with one voice.
The young sub-lieutenant attempted to speak, but Count Lieven stopped
him by touching his arm. "Silence, sir; I shall not mention what has
passed; and you will ruin yourself by the utterance of a syllable."
His magnanimity awed and convinced the disloyal officer.
"Lieven, I confide to you the conduct of this regiment," remarked the
Grand-duke emphatically.
"I will answer for its loyalty with my life, your Imperial Highness,"
replied the Count.
The Grand-duke departed, and on his rounds, if he received no
enthusiastic greeting, at least found what he sought, obedience to the
authority of the Emperor Nicholas.
Reinforcements came in on every side; the Sappers and Miners drew up in
order of battle, before the palace of the Hermitage; the rest of the
Regiment of Moscow, rescued from the stain of rebellion by the courage
and address of Count Lieven, now proudly debouched by the Perspective
of Niewski. The sight of these troops gave a delusive hope to the
revolted, who, believing them to be on their side, greeted them with
loud cheers; but they were instantly undeceived, for the new-comers
ranged themselves along the Hotel of the Tribunals, facing the palace,
and with the Cuirassiers, Artillery, and Chevalier guards, inclosed the
revolted in a circle of steel.
A moment after, they heard the chant of the priests. It was the
Patriarch, who came out of the church of Casan, followed by all his
clergy, and preceded by the holy banners. He now commanded the revolted
"in the name of heaven, to return to their duty." The soldiers, for
the first time perhaps in their lives, regarded with contempt the
pictures which they had been accustomed from infancy to regard with
superstitious veneration, and they desired the Patriarch "to let them
alone, since if heavenly things belonged to the priestly jurisdiction,
they could take care of those of earth." The Patriarch continued his
injunctions to obedience, notwithstanding this discouraging rebuff,
but the Emperor ordered him to desist and retire. Nicholas himself was
resolved to make one effort to bring back these rebels to their duty.
Those who surrounded the Emperor wished to prevent him from risking his
person, but he boldly replied, "It is my game that is playing, and it
is but fair play on my part to set my life on the stake."
He ordered the gate to be opened, but scarcely had he been obeyed,
before the Grand-duke Michael approached him, and whispered in his
ear that that part of the Regiment Preobrajenski by which he was
then surrounded, had made common cause with the rebels, and that
the Prince T., their commander, whose absence he had remarked with
astonishment, was at the head of the conspiracy. Nicholas remembered
that four-and-twenty years before the same regiment had kept guard
before the red palace, while its Colonel, Prince Talitzen, strangled
the Emperor Paul, his father.
His situation was terrible, but he did not even change countenance; he
only showed that he had formed a desperate resolution. In an instant he
turned and gave his orders to one of his generals, "Bring me hither the
Grand-duke."
The general returned with the young prince: the Emperor raised the boy
in his arms, and advancing to the grenadiers, said, "Soldiers, if I am
killed, behold your sovereign. Open your ranks; I confide him to your
loyalty."
A long, loud hurrah, a cry of enthusiasm that came from the very heart
of these suspected soldiers, reëchoed to that of the Emperor, whose
magnanimous confidence had won their admiration. The most guilty among
them dropped their weapons and opened their arms to receive the heir
of the Empire. The imperial pledge was placed with colors in the midst
of the regiment, a guarded and sacred asylum for honor and innocence.
The Emperor mounted his horse and went out of the gate, where he was
met by his generals, who implored him not to go any further, as the
rebels openly avowed their intention of killing their sovereign, and
their arms were loaded. The Emperor made a sign to them with his
hand to leave him a free passage, and forbidding them to accompany
him, spurred his horse and galloped forward till he arrived within
pistol-shot. "Soldiers," cried he, "I am told that you wish to kill me.
Is that true? If it is, here I am!"
There was a pause, while the Emperor sat on horseback, remaining like
an equestrian statue between the two bodies of troops. Twice the word
fire was heard among the rebel ranks, and twice some feeling of respect
to the dauntless courage of the sovereign restrained the execution of
the order; but at the third command some muskets loaded with ball were
discharged, which whistled past the Emperor without striking him, but
wounded, at a hundred paces behind him, Colonel Velho and many soldiers.
At that moment the Grand-duke Michael and Count Milarodowich galloped
towards the Emperor, the regiment of cuirassiers and those of the
Chevalier guards made a forward movement--the artillerymen were about
to apply their matches to the cannon.
"Halt," cried the Emperor. All obeyed. "General," said he to Count
Milarodowich, "go to these unfortunate men and endeavor to bring them
to their allegiance."
The Count and the Grand-duke Michael rode forward, but the rebels
received them with a shower of ball, accompanied by their war-cry,
"Live Constantine!"
"Soldiers," cried the Count, who was conspicuous alike by his fine
martial figure and splendid uniform covered with orders; "soldiers,
behold this sabre," and he flourished above his head a magnificent
Turkish one, the hilt of which was set with jewels, and advancing with
it to the front ranks of the rebels, he continued, "This sabre was
given me by his Imperial Highness the Czarowitz, and on my honor, I
will make oath upon its blade, that you have been deceived, that the
Czarowitz has abdicated the imperial crown, and that your real and
legitimate sovereign is the Emperor Nicholas."
Cries of "Live Constantine!" and the report of a pistol were the
replies given by the revolted to the address of the Count, whose action
with the sword arm had left his side exposed to the enemy. He was seen
to reel in the saddle. Another pistol was aimed at the Grand-duke
Michael, but the soldiers of the Marine, though included in the revolt,
seized the arm of the assassin.
Count Orloff and the cuirassiers faced the heavy fire of the musketry,
and enveloped in their ranks the wounded Milarodowich, the Grand-duke
Michael and the Emperor Nicholas, whom they carried off by force to the
palace.
The Count, wounded to death, sat his horse with difficulty, and the
moment he arrived at the palace, fell into the arms of those who
surrounded him.
The Emperor, notwithstanding the late unfortunate attempt, still wished
to make one last endeavor to bring back the revolted, but while he
was issuing orders to that effect, the Grand-duke Michael seized the
match: "Fire," cried he, "fire upon the assassins." At that moment four
cannons opened upon the rebels, and paid with usury the deaths they
had sent into the loyal ranks of the imperialists. Before the voice
of the Emperor could stop the slaughter, a second discharge followed
the first. The effect of these volleys within reach of pistol-shot was
terrible. More than sixty men of the grenadier corps of the Regiment
of Moscow and the Marine guards fell; the rebel troops fled, some by
the street Galernain, some by the English quay or by the bridge Isaac,
others across the frozen waters of the Neva, then a plain of ice, but
all were hotly pursued by the Chevalier guards at full gallop.
That evening Count Milarodowich, who was struggling with the agonies
of death, expressed a wish to see the bullet which had given him his
mortal wound. The chirurgeon, who had successfully traced and extracted
the ball, put it into his patient's hand. The expiring warrior
carefully examined the missive, its weight, and form, and found it
deficient in calibre. "I am satisfied," said he, "that ball was aimed
by no soldier." Five minutes after these words, he breathed his last.
He then paid the debt of nature, the only debt he ever paid in his
life. Handsome, valiant, the finest horseman in the army, and the idol
of his own soldiers, the Russian Murat lost his life by the hand of
a Russian, but not of a Russian soldier. The rival of the _cidevant_
King of Naples loved display in every shape; but the field of battle,
at the head of his cavalry, was the theatre on which he best loved to
exhibit his martial form, splendid horsemanship, and daring courage.
The gaming-table found him as reckless of his fortune as the field
of his life, and the bravest cavalry general in the Russian service
was a ruined gamester, loaded with debts which his death acquitted by
leaving him insolvent. In paying the debt of nature Count Milarodowich
surrendered his only personal possession.
The next day, at nine o'clock in the morning, while the population of
his capital was yet uncertain whether the rebellion was effectually
crushed, Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, gave his hand to the Empress
to assist her into a droski which stood before the gates of the
winter-palace, and drove through the streets of St. Petersburg. He
stopped before the barracks as if to offer his bold bosom to the
bullet or the steel of the assassin. The sight of his fine countenance,
shadowed by the floating plumes of his military hat, far from exciting
treasonable demonstrations, awakened lively expressions of loyalty and
devotion to his person, and cries of "Long live Nicholas!" greeted his
fortunate rashness. The Russian people knew and recognized in him a
brave man and great sovereign.
The trial of the chief conspirators took place under the shadow of
night and secrecy; they were brought from all parts of the empire to
St. Petersburg. The sentence, but not the examination of the guilty,
alone was made public; eighty persons were condemned to death, or
life-long exile in Siberia. The most powerful, according to the custom
of Russia, increased the population of Siberia; among these we find
the name of Prince T.: his wife, with rare devotion, petitioned and
obtained from the Emperor permission to accompany her husband to that
dreary land of woe and crime. The decimation of the disloyal but
seduced regiments was an act of severe military justice that astonished
Europe, but secured the tranquillity of Russia. The son of the Emperor
Paul, whose life and death had been the stake of the military contest
of December, 1825, might be better excused than any other man for that
tremendous sentence. He had been fired upon by his own soldiers while
unarmed and confiding his person to their generosity; his brother,
and his plenipotentiary, Count Milarodowich, had been aimed at by
assassins, and the Count had died of his wound.
A flash of magnanimity enlightened this cloud of severity. In the list
of conspirators the Emperor remarked the name of Suwarrow, a name
dear to Russia and associated with her victories. He chose to examine
this young man, the grandson of the great field-marshal, himself.
His countenance and manner, unusually gentle, seemed to inspire
confidence. The questions he asked this lieutenant only required a
simple affirmative or denial, and they were not of a nature to elicit
a confession of guilt. "Gentlemen, you see and hear," remarked the
Emperor to his council, "it is as I have told you, a Suwarrow cannot
be a rebel," and he acquitted the prisoner, and gave him a captain's
commission and sent him back to his regiment; but unfortunately for the
conspirators, this lieutenant was the only person who bore that favored
name. All were not Suwarrows.
It was remarked that those who were executed uttered these words
as their last legacy to posterity, "Live Russia! Live Liberty! our
avengers are at hand!" Their war-cry of "Live Constantine!" false to
their hearts, was not repeated by lips which the presence of death had
rendered then the echo of truth.
The funeral pomp of the widowed Empress Elizabeth, whose remains were
brought for interment to St. Petersburg in this same month of December,
turned the thoughts of its inhabitants from these scenes of civil
strife and the executions that followed them, to a Princess, whom for
twenty-four years they had regarded as a link between the human and
angelic natures. The memory of these events seemed buried in that
sepulchre, which the tears of a grateful people had consecrated to the
remembrance of the consort of the deceased Emperor Alexander.
From Nimrod's Bacchanalia Memorabilia.
DRINKING EXPERIENCES.
The pleasure imparted by wine to me is great, but very short-lived:
it appears to mount, as it were, to a crisis; after which it somewhat
rapidly declines. In fact, it does not enliven me beyond a certain
pitch. It then ceases its charms; doubtless, because my stomach, the
centre of all sympathy, feels oppressed by it. I grow dull, my head
aches, I am inclined for sleep, and wish for bed.--But it does not
rob me of self-possession, nor incline me to wrangle or quarrel. On
the contrary, it excites my love, not my hatred, and greatly expands
my heart. I have granted many a favor, and promised many more, by the
inspiration of the jolly god. I have shaken hands with, sworn eternal
friendship for, many a man, and made love to many a woman, for whom,
vulgarly speaking, I cared not a rush. In short, I have a hundred times
made a fool of myself by talking, boasting--not lying, for I have ever
held that low vice in abhorrence--and occasionally laid wagers, and
matched horses, without a chance of winning. But, as I have already
stated, I never was so overcome by wine as not to know where I was, and
what I said. In fact, it never had the power to make me forget that I
was born a gentleman; and I am happy in the reflection, that I have
travelled thus far through life without having been once called upon to
make an apology for an insult given, either when drunk or sober; nor to
demand but two, and those were the result of excess in wine. One was
tendered to me on the first dawn of returning reason; the other, I am
sorry to say, at the pistol's mouth. But the events I am alluding to
occurred many years back, when, as a well-known sporting old earl of
the last century said of himself, "the devil was very strong in me."
I never was drunk, from drinking spirits, more than twice, which was
with very strong brandy and water. Now he that praises drunkenness
is a sot convicted on his own evidence; but were I to drink for what
is called drinking's sake--that is, to acquire an artificial state
of pleasurable excitement--brandy should be the liquor I should fly
to to secure it. The "divine luxuries of opium" I never yet tasted;
but the powers of wine upon me are, comparatively with brandy, truly
insignificant. At the period I am alluding to, it not only appeared
to afford me a sure panacea for all evils, past, present, and to
come, but to open unlimited prospects of future bliss. I felt as if I
were possessed of more than human powers, and that there was nothing
I willed I could not do. In short, it eventually made me mad; and,
on each occasion, I nearly lost my life, together with my senses.
On the one, I attempted to go to sea, by moonlight, in a small open
boat, without either rudder or sail, and in the current of a strong
tide running out of a Welsh bay; on the other, although more than two
hundred miles distant from it, I got upon a coachbox to go to London,
in my evening dress; and did "go," till I tumbled off it into the road.
To the latter excursion I was no doubt indebted to my early propensity
to driving coaches; but having at no time of my life had a fancy for
the sea, I owed my intended aquatic trip to a member of the yacht club,
who was my partner in the debauch. Death, says Johnson, is more than
usually unwelcome to a rich man; and as my friend is possessed of ten
thousand a year, he was by no means a fit subject to be mangled by
Welsh crabs. Had we, however, accomplished our purpose in unmooring the
boat, we should never have been heard of in this world any more. The
day would have come upon us both "unawares."
To return to wine. The effect of wine is generally supposed to
invigorate the understanding, and to stimulate the mental powers--of
poets, especially. Thus Horace asks Bacchus whither he is about to
transport him? But by the words "_tui plenum_," I think he must have
meant full, not of his wine, but of his divinity, without the aid
of which he felt himself unequal to pen a panegyric upon Octavius.
Now, were I to say that it is in the power of wine to sink me below
mortality--in other words, to make a brute of me--I should certainly
go beyond my tether; but I can safely assert that, if I were a
poet, so far from realizing Horace's expectations of it, it would
lead me _down_, not up, the hill. In fact, when under its immediate
influence--I do not mean drunk, but "pretty considerably sprung," as
the term is--I can scarcely indite a common letter. It appears to
stultify my ordinary capacities. I must, however, admit that, on the
first waking after a plentiful allowance of good wine, some bright
thoughts have come across my mind, and, when not lost by an intervening
nap, have been found worthy of being noted down, and now and then made
serviceable. It would indeed be an act of ingratitude to the jolly god,
were I to omit the fact, that I once did rise from my bed, at four
o'clock in the morning, after having sacrificed largely the overnight,
and wrote the best thing I ever did write; at least, so said a certain
learned sergeant, who now wears a silk gown, and who told me he would
have given five hundred pounds to have been the author of it. But it
never saw the light. It was a satire; and "_Nulla venenato litera mixta
joco est_," has ever been, and shall ever continue to be, my motto. I
wish not to dip my pen in gall.
I have found wine, taken to excess for only a few days, to depress
the mind more than the body; that is to say, when, as a friend of
mine expresses himself, "the _animus_ is flown;" and I once heard
this natural effect of over-mental excitement admirably illustrated
by a very illiterate coachman of the old school. "Was Jem drunk when
he upset his coach the other night?" was a question I put to one of
this fraternity some years back, when drinking to excess with them was
the order of both day and night. "Why, sir," he replied, "he warn't
drunk, nor he warn't sober; _the liquor was a-dying in him, and he was
stupid_." Now, this strongly resembles my own case. Had I to write
for a prize, and that prize were immortality, I would not depend much
upon the assistance of Bacchus. I would rather rely on my own natural
powers, gently stimulated by wine when they flagged.
In all ages of the world, however, clever men, and poets especially,
have been more or less addicted to drinking to excess. The austere
Cato, the voluptuous Cæsar, were each given to what Seneca calls the
_intemperantia bibendi_--notwithstanding which, according to Seneca,
the wisdom of the former received no blemish from this cause. His
daughter, indeed, admitted that it softened the rigor of her father's
virtues. Titus, the delight of human kind, sat late after his dinner:
his brother, Domitian, the tyrant and fly-tormentor, never later than
the setting sun. The influence of wine upon poets has long since been
proverbial. Poetry, in fact, has been called the wine of the mind;
and wine, like love, makes poets. The old Greeks drank and sang; and
Anacreon would not have been Anacreon, but for the inspiring juice
of the grape, as he himself tells us in his celebrated hymn to the
full-blown rose--
"Crown me, and instant, god of wine,
Strains from my lyre shall reach thy shrine."
Indeed, the first prize contended for by poets was a cask of wine;
and the Bacchic hymn was called "The Hymn of the Cask." Horace, in
fact, pronounces a water-drinking poet to be little worth--even the
springs of Castalia will not avail; but after his bottle of Falernian,
he boldly asserts, in his ode to Bacchus, in which he wishes to soap
Cæsar, that no daring was then too great for his muse.
Both Homer and Horace must have liked wine, and experience on occasions
its good effects, or they would not have been the authors of such
glowing panegyrics upon it. It is true the latter is moral in the
midst of his gayety, uniting the wisdom of the philosopher with the
playfulness of the poet; still, and notwithstanding he preaches up
moderation in desires, as the chief source of human happiness, he
must have been _secretly_ attached to the Epicurean school, in our
acceptation of that term. We may, I think, glean this from various
passages of his several works, and especially from the compliment he
pays Tibullus on the knowledge he displays of the _savoir vivre_ at his
own house and table. Again, although in his ode to Apollo he wished
us to believe he did not like it, the one to his Cask is an incentive
to _drinking_. In another to Telephus, he himself gets "as drunk as
a lord;" and had a pretty good bousing match on his escape from the
tree, as well as at his party on Cæsar's birth-day. Then how does he
promise to welcome Macænas when he came to sup with him? _To take a
hundred bumpers with him for friendship's sake!_ Neither is this all.
Notwithstanding his telling his friend that his wine was not such as
_he_ ought to drink, it is evident he did not "think small beer of it"
himself. He notes its age, seals the casks with his own hands, and taps
a fresh one on any very memorable occasion. In short, but for a bodily
infirmity to which he was subject, there is little doubt but he would
have been one of the jolly dogs of his own day. At all events, as has
been elegantly said of him, "he tuned his harp to pleasure, and to easy
temper of his own soul."
How happens it, it may be asked, that not a single Grecian has ascended
Parnassus for so many ages back, and that the vocal hills of Arcadia
no longer resound to the Doric reed? There are, we know, several
reasons given for this, such as a despotic government, alteration in
the language, &c., &c.; but the most powerful cause of the literary
degeneracy of this once justly celebrated people is, doubtless, in the
substitution of the enervating luxuries of coffee, tobacco, and opium,
for the invigorating powers of good wine. It was not so in Anacreon's
days.
Let us now turn to the eminently gifted men of later times. Sir Richard
Steele spent half his hours in a tavern. In fact, he may be said to
have measured time by the bottle; as on being sent for by his wife,
he returned for answer that "he would be with her in half a bottle."
The like may be said of Savage; and Addison was as dull as an alderman
till he was three parts drunk. Neither would he stop at that point.
It is on record of him that he once drank till he vomited in the
company of Voltaire; which called forth the cutting remark, that the
only good thing that came out of his mouth, in Voltaire's presence,
was the wine that had gone into it. It is also recorded of Pitt, but
I cannot vouch for the truth of it, that two bottles of port wine per
diem was his usual allowance, and that it was to _potens Bacchus_ he
was indebted for the almost superhuman labor he went through during
his short, but actively employed life. His friend and colleague, Harry
Dundas, a clever man also in his way, went the pace with him over the
mahogany; and the joke about the Speaker in his chair, after they had
dined together, cannot be forgotten. Pitt could see no Speaker; but
his friend, like Horace with the candle, saw two. Sheridan, latterly,
without wine, was a driveller. He sacrificed to it talents such as no
man I ever heard or read of possessed, for no subject appeared to be
beyond his reach. I knew him when I was a boy, and thought him then
something more than human. The learned Porson would get drunk in a
pothouse--so would Robert Burns, the poet; and Byron drank brandy and
water by bucketsful. Fox was a thirsty soul, and drank far too much
wine for either a politician or a play-man; yet, like Nestor over
the bowl, he was always great. But a contemporary of his, likewise a
great play-man and a clever fellow, out-heroded Herod. He estimated
his losses in hogsheads of claret; and it was humorously said of John
Taylor--for such was his name--that, after a certain hour of the night,
"he could not be removed _without a permit_, as he had more than a
dozen of claret on board." Two of the finest actors that ever graced
the British stage could scarcely be kept sober enough to perform their
parts: But enough of this. Wine taken in excess is the bane of talent.
Like fire upon incense, it may cause rich fumes to escape; but the
dregs and refuse, when the sacrifice is ended, are little worth. By a
long continuance, indeed, in any vicious indulgence, the mind, like
the body, is reduced to a state of atrophy; and knowledge, like food,
passes through it without adding to its strength. But repeated vinous
intoxication soonest unfits a man for either mental or bodily exertion.
Equally with the effect of violent love, so powerfully set forth by the
poet Lucretius, it creates an indolence and listlessness which damps
all noble pursuits, as well as a neglect of all useful affairs--
"Labitur interea res et vadimonia fiunt;
Languent officia, atque ægrotat fama vacillans."
There are countries--half civilised ones, of course--in which
intoxication is esteemed the greatest of human pleasures; and
Lord Bacon thought it only second to love. Much of the folly of
drunkenness, however, in the middle and upper orders of society,
proceeds from a laudable desire to exercise in the extreme the rites
of hospitality. To the "honest pride of hospitality," as Byron calls
it, many a man who hates drinking, has given many a slice of his
perhaps already shaken constitution. And here is really something
like an excuse. Independently of the making welcome our friends, and
seeing ourselves surrounded by them under our own roof, being one of
the first among the ordinary comforts of life, hospitality has ever
been considered a primary social duty. The best definition of real
hospitality is given by Cicero, who admits that there is nothing that
contributes more effectually to the happiness of human life than
society,--distinguishing from the sensual gratification of the palate,
the pleasing relaxation of the mind, which he says is best produced
by the freedom of social converse, always most agreeable at the table.
Neither does he appear to be an enemy to a cheerful glass; and we must
admire the definition he gives of drinking parties. "The Greeks," says
he, "call them by a word which signifies computations, whereas we more
emphatically denominate them convivial meetings; intimating thereby,
that it is in a communication of this nature that life is most truly
enjoyed." That Cicero, however, was temperate, may be concluded by the
fact of his having written when past his sixtieth year his celebrated
Philippies, in which his powers of reasoning are more vigorous, and his
language more touching, than in any of his former and younger orations.
He used wine in moderation; and it is thus that it answers the ends of
Providence. It then exhilarates and strengthens the mind, as well as
the body, and, like the bloom on the female cheek, beautifies it, and
shows health.
There are said to be three modes of bearing the ills of life,
indifference, philosophy, and religion; and many add--the bottle. But
the effect of wine on grief is of a doubtful nature. It may deaden
the pang for a while, but it will return on the morrow with redoubled
force, and with the powers of the sufferer less equal to contend with
it. Nevertheless, the maxim of Anacreon, that "when Bacchus enters our
cares sleep," is in part true; and a temporary oblivion of care and
disappointment is generally produced by an agreeable party and good
cheer. And thus is Shakespeare justified in calling wine the merry
cheerer of the human heart, as well as others who have asserted that it
not only creates pleasure, but mitigates pain. For the latter purpose,
indeed, it was formerly given to condemned malefactors, previously to
their suffering; "Give strong drink to him who is ready to perish,"
says the author of the book of Proverbs, "and wine unto them that be of
heavy hearts. _Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his
misery no more._"
If a tranquil mind and freedom from pain make up the sum of a happy
life, how great is the value of this cordial drop, and how thankful
should we be for it! How sacred and profane writers agree in the
essential qualities of the pure juice, especially in the relief of
wretchedness. "See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing," is no
exaggeration of its power in lessening anguish from past misfortunes,
or present ills; but in the following translation of a fragment of
Bacchylides, we see what rays of brightness it can throw over our
future prospects:
"Thirsty comrade! would'st thou know
All the raptures that do flow
From those sweet compulsive rules
Of our ancient drinking schools?
First, the precious draught shall raise
Amorous thoughts in giddy maze,
Mingling Bacchus' present treasure
With the hopes of higher pleasure.
Next, shall chase through empty air
All th' intolerant hosts of care;
Give thee conquest, riches, power;
Bid thee scale the guarded tower;
Bid thee reign o'er land and sea
With unquestioned sov'reignty.
Thou thy palace shall behold,
Bright with ivory and gold;
While each ship that ploughs the main,
Filled with Egypt's choicest grain,
Shall unload her ponderous store,
Thirsty comrade, at thy door."
Yet guided by my own experience, of the various effects of wine on the
mind, I cannot go quite the length of some of its panegyrists. So far,
indeed, from thinking with Ovid that it takes even the wrinkles out of
the face, I am more inclined to believe that it adds to their number by
the excitement that it creates; and although the festive pleasures of
the table, in addition to the society of friends, may cheer the heart,
and even irradiate gloom, the talisman is not there by which the cause
may be reached, and the pain destroyed, beyond the hour.
"Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
Though pleasure fires the madd'ning soul,
The heart--the heart is lonely still."
No--although I fear I am about to speak without experience now--it is
my opinion, that neither the resources of the philosopher, nor the
consolations of religion, nor conscious worth, unaccompanied by native
fortitude and energy of mind, are of much avail against real grief. Why
they should not be, is no business of mine to inquire; nor would it be
becoming me to question the designs of Providence. But this much I may
affirm without fear of offence,--Human life is prudently chequered with
good and evil; and the most likely way to enjoy it, is to make the best
of the one while the other is away.
The powerful influence of wine on society is estimated by Dr. Johnson,
in the _Rambler_: "In the bottle," says he, "discontent seeks for
comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence."
Nothing is more true than this; although it sometimes happens that the
first is looked for in vain, the second proves false, and the latter
exceeds its bounds. The union of sensual and intellectual enjoyment,
however, is requisite to complete the happiness of "the double
animal"--the perfect man; and as all mankind are not philosophers,
much less abstract ones, after-dinner conversation would generally
be flat without the genial influence of good wine. Indeed, the wit
of the wittiest man, and the most agreeable companion I ever sat
down with, appeared to rise in brilliancy with every glass he drank;
and when, to use an expression of his own, he felt himself "vinously
inclined,"--that is to say, when he had what Cicero calls the "_furor
vinolentus_" upon him, there were no bounds to his humorous sallies.
Upon old men wine is generally well bestowed.
"----Give me a bowl of wine;
I have not that alacrity of spirit
Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have,"
exclaims the bold King Richard; and I once heard a fine old sportsman,
and very worthy man, declare, after a bottle of good port, that he
would not exchange the present--his eightieth year--for the gayest he
had ever spent.
Luckily for the credit of the human race--although Cleopatra hunted
and _drank_ with Antony--there has been, in all ages of the world, a
sense of shame attached to the vice of drunkenness in women, having any
pretensions to character, as something contrary to their more refined
nature. By the ancient Roman laws it was punishable even by death; and
we find that even the abandoned women who celebrated the Bacchanalia
were ashamed to do so, except under the disguise of masks.
To the credit of the present age, drunkenness in women is not a
common failing; but when they once yield to the vice, they have less
moderation in the indulgence of it than men have. That such was the
case in other ages and countries, may be gleaned from a passage in
a comic play-writer, contemporary with Plato, which has been thus
accurately rendered:
"Remark how wisely ancient art provides,
The broad-brimmed cup, with flat expanded sides;
A cup contrived for _man's_ discreeter use,
And sober potions of the generous juice.
But _woman's_ more ambitious, thirsty soul
Soon long'd to revel in the plenteous bowl;
Deep and capacious as the swelling hold
Of some stout bark, she shaped the hollow mould;
Then, turning out a vessel like a tun,
Simpering, exclaimed--_Observe, I drink but one_."
To return to the effect of wine on the ruder sex. Next to a smoky
house and a scolding wife, it is the greatest trial of the temper
to which that of man is exposed. In fact, it is a test by which it
may be proved; and the advice of Horace is excellent, _not to choose
a friend till we have put him to this test_. Addison is likewise
happy in his remark on this point. "Wine," says he, "is not to be
drunk by all who can swallow;" and truer words were never written.
It has an extraordinary effect upon low and uncultivated minds; as
was exemplified in late times, when war prices and abundance of money
placed it within the reach of the English commonalty. Rows and broils,
with marked insolence towards superiors, were the concomitant results.
Neither is the observation of Pliny a whit less just. He says truth
is vulgarly and _properly_ attributed to wine; and I am decidedly of
his opinion. In fact, our English term, "disguised in liquor," is
improperly used; inasmuch as a blackguard when drunk is in his nature a
blackguard when sober. The tongue, says the Bible, is at all times an
unruly member; but when under the influence of wine, it is still more
apt to run riot. Then, again, drunken men are given to "err in vision
and stumble in judgment," and to put constructions upon words which
they were not intended to convey. When we sacrifice to Bacchus, we are
not favored by Mercury; and the well-known adage of "wine in, wit out,"
is but an abbreviation of the equally well proved axiom, that wine
raises the imagination, but depresses the judgment.
Neither is the highly bred gentleman, if much addicted to intoxication,
quite safe to be admitted into close friendship, inasmuch as he renders
himself, by the practice, unworthy of confidence. Wine so unlocks the
cabinet of the heart, that it is easily looked into when we are off our
guard.
From an article in the "Home Book of the Picturesque,"
just published by G. P. Putnam.
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY COMPARED.
BY J. FENIMORE COOPER.
The great distinction between American and European scenery, as a
whole, is to be found in the greater want of finish in the former than
in the latter, and to the greater superfluity of works of art in the
old world than in the new. Nature has certainly made some differences,
though there are large portions of continental Europe that, without
their artificial accessories, might well pass for districts in our
own region; and which forcibly remind the traveller of his native
home. As a whole, it must be admitted that Europe offers to the senses
sublimer views and certainly grander, than are to be found within our
own borders, unless we resort to the Rocky Mountains, and the ranges in
California and New Mexico.
In musing on these subjects, the mind of the untravelled American
naturally turns first towards England. He has pictured to himself
landscapes and scenery on which are impressed the teeming history of
the past. We shall endeavour to point out the leading distinctions
between the scenery of England and that of America, therefore, as the
course that will probably be most acceptable to the reader.
The prevalent characteristic of the English landscape is its air of
snugness and comfort. In these respects it differs entirely from its
neighbor, France. The English, no doubt, have a great deal of poverty
and squalid misery among them. But it is kept surprisingly out of the
ordinary view. Most of it, indeed, is to be found in the towns, and
even in them it is concealed in out of the way places and streets
seldom entered by the stranger.
There are places in America, more especially in the vicinities of
the large towns, that have a strong resemblance to the more crowded
portions of England, though the hedge is usually wanting and the stone
wall is more in favor among ourselves than it appears ever to have been
among our ancestors. The great abundance of wood, in this country,
too, gives us the rail and the board for our fences, objects which the
lovers of the picturesque would gladly see supplanted by the brier and
the thorn. All that part of Staten Island, which lies nearest to the
quarantine ground, has a marked resemblance to what we should term
suburban English landscape. The neighborhoods of most of the old towns
in the northern States, have more or less of the same character; it
being natural that the descendants of Englishmen should have preserved
as many of the usages of their forefathers as were practicable. We
know of no portion of this country that bears any marked resemblance
to the prevalent characteristics of an ordinary French landscape. In
France there are two great distinctive features that seem to divide the
materials of the views between them. One is that of a bald nakedness
of formal _grandes routes_, systematically lined with trees, a total
absence of farm-houses, fences, hedges, and walls, little or no forest,
except in particular places, scarcely any pieces of detached woods, and
a husbandry that is remarkable for its stiffness and formality. The
fields of a French acclivity, when the grain is ripe, or ripening, have
a strong resemblance to an ordinary Manchester pattern-card, in which
the different cloths, varying in color, are placed under the eye at one
glance. The effect of this is not pleasing. The lines being straight
and the fields exhibiting none of the freedom of nature. Stiffness
and formality, indeed, impair the beauty of nine-tenths of the French
landscapes; though as a whole the country is considered fine, and is
certainly very productive. The other distinctive feature to which we
allude is of a directly contrary character, being remarkable for the
affluence of its objects. It often occurs in that country that the
traveller finds himself on a height that commands a view of great
extent, which is literally covered with _bourgs_ or small towns and
villages. This occurs particularly in Normandy, in the vicinity of
Paris and as one approaches the Loire. In such places it is no unusual
thing for the eye to embrace, as it might be in a single view, some
forty or fifty cold, grave-looking, chiselled _bourgs_ and villages,
almost invariably erected in stone. The effect is not unpleasant,
for the subdued color of the buildings has a tendency to soften the
landscape and to render the whole solemn and imposing. We can recall
many of these scenes that have left indelible impressions on the mind,
and which, if not positively beautiful in a rural sense, are very
remarkable. That from the heights of Montmorenci, near Paris, is one of
them; and there is another, from the hill of St. Catharine, near Rouen,
that is quite as extraordinary.
The greater natural freedom that exists in an ordinary American
landscape, and the abundance of detached fragments of wood, often
render the views of this country strikingly beautiful when they are of
sufficient extent to conceal the want of finish in the details, which
require time and long-continued labor to accomplish. In this particular
we conceive that the older portions of the United States offer to the
eye a general outline of view that may well claim to be even of a
higher cast, than most of the scenery of the old world.
There is one great charm, however, that it must be confessed is nearly
wanting among us. We allude to the coast. Our own is, with scarcely
an exception, low, monotonous and tame. It wants Alpine rocks, bold
promontories, visible heights inland, and all those other glorious
accessories of the sort that render the coast of the Mediterranean the
wonder of the world. It is usual for the American to dilate on the size
of his bays and rivers, but objects like these require corresponding
elevation in the land. Admirable as is the bay of New-York for the
purposes of commerce, it holds but a very subordinate place as a
landscape among the other havens of the world. The comparison with
Naples that has so often been made, is singularly unjust, there not
being two bays of any extent to be found, that are really less alike
than these. It was never our good fortune to see Constantinople or Rio
de Janeiro, the two noblest and most remarkable scenes of this kind,
as we have understood, known to the traveller. But we much question
if either will endure the test of rigid and severe examination better
than the celebrated Gulf of Napoli. The color of the water, alone, is
a peculiar beauty of all the Mediterranean bays: it is the blue of
the deep sea, carried home to the very rocks of the coast. In this
respect, the shores of America, also, have less claim to beauty than
those of Europe, generally. The waters are green, the certain sign of
their being shallow. Similar tints prevail in the narrow seas between
Holland and England. The name of Holland recalls a land, however, that
is even lower than any portion of our own with which we are acquainted.
There are large districts in Holland that are actually below the level
of the high tides of the sea. This country is a proof how much time,
civilization, and persevering industry, may add even to the interest
of a landscape. While the tameness of the American coast has so little
to relieve it or to give it character, in Holland it becomes the
source of wonder and admiration. The sight of vast meadows, villages,
farm-houses, churches, and other works of art, actually lying below the
level of the adjacent canals, and the neighboring seas, wakes in the
mind a species of reverence for human industry. This feeling becomes
blended with the views, and it is scarcely possible to gaze upon a
Dutch landscape without seeing, at the same time, ample pages from
the history of the country and the character of its people. On this
side of the ocean, there are no such peculiarities. Time, numbers, and
labor, are yet wanting to supply the defects of nature, and we must be
content, for a while, with the less teeming pictures drawn in our youth
and comparative simplicity.
On the American coast the prevailing character is less marked at the
northward and eastward than at the southward. At some future day, the
Everglades of Florida may have a certain resemblance to Holland. They
are the lowest land, we believe, in any part of this country.
Taking into the account the climate and its productions, the adjacent
mountains, the most picturesque outlines of the lakes, and the works
of art which embellish the whole, we think that most lovers of natural
scenery would prefer that around the lakes of Como and Maggiore to
that of any other place familiarly known to the traveller. Como is
ordinarily conceived to carry off the palm in Europe, and it is not
probable that the great mountains of the East or any part of the Andes,
can assemble as many objects of grandeur, sweetness, magnificence and
art, as are to be found in this region. Of course, our own country has
nothing of the sort to compare with it. The Rocky Mountains, and the
other great ranges in the recent accession of territory, must possess
many noble views, especially as one proceeds south; but the accessories
are necessarily wanting, for a union of art and nature can alone render
scenery perfect.
In the way of the wild, the terrific, and the grand, nature is
sufficient of herself: but Niagara is scarcely more imposing than
she is now rendered lovely by the works of man. It is true that the
celebrated cataract has a marked sweetness of expression, if we may use
such a term, that singularly softens its magnificence, and now that men
are becoming more familiar with its mysteries, and penetrating into
its very mists, by means of a small steamboat, the admirer of nature
discovers a character different from that which first strikes the
senses.
We regard it as hypercritical to speak of the want of Alpine scenery
around Niagara. On what scale must the mountains be moulded to bear
a just comparison, in this view of the matter, with the grandeur of
the cataract! The Alps, the Andes, and the Himmalaya, would scarcely
suffice to furnish materials necessary to produce the contrast, on any
measurement now known to the world. In fact the accessories, except as
they are blended with the Falls themselves, as in the wonderful gorge
through which the river rushes, in an almost fathomless torrent, as
if frightened at its own terrific leap; the Whirlpool, and all that
properly belongs to the stream, from the commencement of the Rapids,
or, to be more exact, from the placid, lake-like scenery above these
Rapids, down to the point where the waters of this mighty strait are
poured into the bosom of the Ontario, strike us as being in singular
harmony with the views of the Cataract itself.
The Americans may well boast of their waterfalls, and of their lakes,
notwithstanding the admitted superiority of upper Italy and Switzerland
in connection with the highest classes of the latter. They form objects
of interest over a vast surface of territory, and greatly relieve the
monotony of the inland views. We do not now allude to the five great
lakes, which resemble seas and offer very much the same assemblage
of objects to the eye; but to those of greatly inferior extent, that
are sparkling over so much of the surface of the northern states. The
east, and New-York in particular, abound in them, though farther west
the lover of the picturesque must be content to receive the prairie
in their stead. It would be a great mistake, however, to attempt to
compare any of these lakes with the finest of the old world; though
many of them are very lovely and all contribute to embellish the
scenery. Lake George itself could not occupy more than a fourth or
fifth position in a justly graduated scale of the lakes of Christendom;
though certainly very charming to the eye, and of singular variety
in its aspects. In one particular, indeed, this lake has scarcely an
equal. We allude to its islands, which are said to equal the number of
the days in the year. Points, promontories, and headlands are scarcely
ever substitutes for islands, which add inexpressibly to the effect of
all water-views.
It has been a question among the admirers of natural scenery, whether
the presence or absence of detached farm-houses, of trees, hedges,
walls and fences, most contribute to the effect of any inland view.
As these are three great points of distinction between the continent
of Europe and our own country, we shall pause a moment to examine
the subject a little more in detail. When the towns and villages are
sufficiently numerous to catch the attention of the eye, and there are
occasional fragments of forest in sight, one does not so much miss the
absence of that appearance of comfort and animated beauty that the
other style of embellishment so eminently possesses. A great deal,
however, depends, as respects these particulars, on the nature of the
architecture and the color of the buildings and fences. It is only in
very particular places and under very dull lights, that the contrast
between white and green is agreeable. A fence that looks as if it were
covered with clothes hung out to dry, does very little towards aiding
the picturesque. And he who endeavors to improve his taste in these
particulars, will not fail to discover in time that a range of country
which gives up its objects, chiselled and distinct, but sober, and
sometimes sombre, will eventually take stronger hold of his fancy than
one that is glittering with the fruits of the paint and the whitewash
brushes. We are never dissatisfied with the natural tints of stone,
for the mind readily submits to the ordering of nature; and though one
color may be preferred to another, each and all are acceptable in their
proper places. Thus, a marble structure is expected to be white, and
as such, if the building be of suitable dimensions and proportions,
escapes our criticism, on account of its richness and uses. The same
may be said of other hues, when not artificial; but we think that most
admirers of nature, as they come to cultivate their tastes, settle down
into a preference for the gray and subdued over all the brighter tints
that art can produce. In this particular, then, we give the preference
to the effects of European scenery, over that of this country, where
wood is so much used for the purposes of building, and where the
fashion has long been to color it with white. A better taste, however,
or what we esteem as such, is beginning to prevail, and houses in towns
and villages are now not unfrequently, even painted in subdued colors.
We regard the effect as an improvement, though to our taste no hue, in
its artificial objects, so embellishes a landscape as the solemn color
of the more sober, and less meretricious looking stones.
We believe that a structure of white, with green blinds, is almost
peculiar to this country. In the most propitious situations, and under
the happiest circumstances, the colors are unquestionably unsuited
to architecture, which, like statuary, should have but one tint. If,
however, it be deemed essential to the flaunting tastes of the mistress
of some mansion, to cause the hues of the edifice in which she resides
to be as gay as her _toilette_, we earnestly protest against the bright
green that is occasionally introduced for such purposes. There is a
graver tint, of the same color, that entirely changes the expression of
a dwelling. Place two of these houses in close proximity, and scarcely
an intellectual being would pass them, without saying that the owner of
the one was much superior to the owner of the other in all that marks
the civilized man. Put a third structure in the immediate vicinity of
these two, that should have but one color on its surface, including its
blinds, and we think that nine persons in ten, except the very vulgar
and uninstructed, would at once jump to the conclusion that the owner
of this habitation was in tastes and refinement superior to both his
neighbors. A great improvement, however, in rural as well as in town
architecture, is now in the course of introduction throughout all the
northern states. More attention is paid to the picturesque than was
formerly the case, and the effects are becoming as numerous as they are
pleasing. We should particularize New Haven, as one of those towns that
has been thus embellished of late years, and there are other places of
nearly equal size that might be mentioned as having the same claims
to an improved taste. But to return to the great distinctive features
between an ordinary American landscape and a similar scene in Europe.
Of the artificial accessories it is scarcely necessary to say any more.
One does not expect to meet with a ruined castle or abbey, or even
fortress, in America; nor, on the other hand, does the traveller look
for the forests of America, or that abundance of wood which gives to
nearly every farm a sufficiency for all the common wants of life, on
the plains and heights of the old world. Wood there certainly is, and
possibly enough to meet the ordinary wants of the different countries,
but it is generally in the hands of the governments or the great
proprietors, and takes the aspect of forests of greater or less size
that are well cared for, cleared and trimmed like the grounds of a park.
Germany has, we think, in some respects a strong resemblance to the
views of America. It is not so much wanting in detached copses and
smaller plantations of trees as the countries farther south and east
of it, while it has less of the naked aspect in general that is so
remarkable in France. Detached buildings occur more frequently in
Germany than in France especially, and we might add also in Spain. The
reader will remember that it is a prevalent usage throughout Europe,
with the exception of the British Islands, Holland, and here and there
a province in other countries, for the rural population to dwell in
villages. This practice gives to the German landscape, in particular,
a species of resemblance to what is ordinarily termed park scenery,
though it is necessarily wanting in much of that expression which
characterizes the embellishments that properly belong to the latter.
With us this resemblance is often even stronger, in consequence of the
careless graces of nature and the great affluence of detached woods.
The distinguishing feature existing in the farm-house, fences and
outbuildings. Of a cloudy day, a distant view in America often bears
this likeness to the park, in a very marked degree, for then the graces
of the scene are visible to the eye, while the defects of the details
are too remote to be detected.
The mountain scenery of the United States, though wanting in grandeur,
and in that wild sublimity which ordinarily belongs to a granite
formation, is not without attractions that are singularly its own.
The great abundance of forest, the arable qualities of the soil, and
the peculiar blending of what may be termed the agricultural and
the savage, unite to produce landscapes of extraordinary beauty and
gracefulness. Vast regions of country possessing this character are to
be found in almost all the old states, for after quitting the coast for
a greater or less distance, varying from one to two hundred miles, the
ranges of the Alleghanies interpose between the monotonous districts
of the Atlantic shores and the great plains of the west. We are of
opinion that as civilization advances, and the husbandman has brought
his lands to the highest state of cultivation, there will be a line of
mountain scenery extending from Maine to Georgia, in a north and south
direction, and possessing a general width of from one to two hundred
miles, from east to west, that will scarcely have a parallel in any
other quarter of the world, in those sylvan upland landscapes, which,
while they are wanting in the sublimity of the Alpine regions, share so
largely in the striking and effective.
It is usual for the American to boast of his rivers, not only for their
size and usefulness, but for their beauties. A thousand streams, that
in older regions would have been rendered memorable, ages since, by
the poet, the painter, art in every form, and the events of a teeming
history, flow within the limits of the United States still unsung,
and nearly unknown. As yet, something is ordinarily wanting, in the
way of finish, along the banks of these inferior water-courses. But
occasionally, in places where art has, as it might be, accidentally
assisted nature, they come into the landscape with the most pleasing
influence on its charms. In this respect, the peculiarity of the
country is rather in a want of uniformity than in any want of material.
To us, it would seem that all the northern states of America, at least,
are far better watered than common, and that consequently they possess
more of this species of beauty. As for the great streams, the largest,
perhaps, have the least claims to high character in this respect in
both the old and the new world. The Rhine is an exception, however, for
it would be difficult to find another river of equal length and with
the same flow of water, that possesses the same diversity of character
or one so peculiar. At its source it descends from the high glaciers of
the Alps a number of howling brooks, which forcing their way through
the upper valleys, unite below in a straggling, rapid, but shallow
stream, that finds its way into the lake of Constance, out of which
it issues a compact, rapid river, imposing by its volume of water,
rather than by its breadth, or any other advantage. Its cataracts, so
celebrated in the old world, can scarcely claim to be the equal of the
Cohoes, or many others of the secondary falls of this country, though
the Rhine has always an abundance of water, which the Mohawk has not.
On quitting Switzerland, this remarkable stream assumes many aspects,
and decorates, beyond a doubt, as much landscape scenery as falls to
the share of any other stream in the known world. We do not think it,
however, in its best parts, equal to the Hudson in its whole length,
though the characters of these two rivers are so very different as
scarcely to admit of a fair comparison. Perhaps the most remarkable
feature of the Rhine is its termination, for after embellishing and
serving the purposes of such an extent of country in the very heart
of Europe, it disappears, as it might be, in a number of straggling,
uninteresting, turbid waters, among the marshes of Holland. This is a
very different exit from that which characterizes the majestic flow of
the Hudson into the Atlantic.
England has no great rivers to boast of, though she has a few of
singular claims to notice, on account of the great flow of the tides
and the vast amount of commerce that they bear on the bosom. The
Thames, so renowned in history, is as uninteresting as possible, until
it passes above the bridges of London, where it becomes an ordinary
pretty sylvan stream.
The Seine, another river, familiar in name, at least, to every reader,
has much higher claims than its neighbor of the British Islands, in
the way of natural beauty. This stream, from Rouen to the Channel,
is not without some very fine scenery, as well as possessing a very
variant and interesting character, with both natural and artificial
accessories, to say nothing of the historical, that draw largely on the
attention.
Italy has many rivers that are celebrated in song or story, but not
one, we think, that should rank high, on the ground of landscape
beauty. Most of her streams are so dependent on the melting of the
snows in the Apennines and Alps, as to be either howling torrents,
or meagre, straggling pools. The Arno, the Po, the Adige, the Tiber,
and all the other rivers of that peninsula, are obnoxious to these
objections. Even the Tiber, which is navigable as high as Rome, for
vessels of a light draft, is either a tranquil thread, or one of those
noisy, turbid streams that overflow their banks and often appear at a
loss to know in which direction to pour their waters.
The day is not distant, when America must possess a vast extent of
territory of a character directly the reverse of that we have described
in our mountain scenery, but which, nevertheless, will not be without
a certain magnificence from its extent, productions and fertility. We
allude to the great plains of the West; those which lie between the
bases of the Alleghanies and the semi-sterile steppes that are known
in this part of the world as the great prairies. Lombardy, teeming as
she is, with population, vines, and all the productions of a fertile
soil, in the possession of millions, sinks into insignificance before
the vast plains that are destined to be her rivals in this quarter of
the world. Perhaps New-York alone could furnish nearly as much of this
character of country as is to be found in Upper Italy; for, stretching
from the shores of Ontario towards the southern ranges of uplands,
and as far east as Utica, is spread to the eye a vast extent of the
most fertile plain, slightly relieved in places with a rolling surface
of very respectable claims to natural beauty. We question if greater
fertility is to be found in any part of the world, than is met with in
the region last mentioned, though drainage and the other works of an
advanced state of husbandry, are still much wanting to bring forth both
its fertility and its beauties.
New-York, indeed, in the way of scenery, has very high claims to
variety, gracefulness, and even grandeur, among the mountains of the
counties bordering on Champlain. By grandeur, however, let there be no
mistake, by receiving the term in any other than a limited sense. Any
well delineated view of a high-class Swiss scene, must at once convince
even the most provincial mind among us that nothing of the sort is to
be found in America, east of the Rocky mountains. Nevertheless, the
Adirondack has claims to a wild grandeur, which, if it do not approach
magnificence, is of a character to impress a region with the seal of
a very noble nature. The lovers of the picturesque sustain a great
loss by means of the numerous lines of railroads that have recently
come into existence. This is true of both Europe and America. In the
course of time, it will be found that every where a country presents
its best face towards its thoroughfares. Every thing that depends on
art, naturally takes this aspect, for men are as likely to put on
their best appearance along a wayside in the country as on the streets
of a town. All that has been done, therefore, in past ages, in these
particulars, is being deranged and in some instances deformed by the
necessity of preserving levels, and avoiding the more valuable portions
of a country, in order to diminish expense. Thus villages and towns
are no longer entered by their finest passages, producing the best
effects; but the traveller is apt to find his view limited by ranges
of sheds, out-houses, and other deformities of that nature. Here and
there, some work of art, compelled by necessity, furnishes a relief to
this deformity. But on the whole, the recent system of railroads has
as yet done very little towards adding much to the picturesque for the
benefit of the traveller. Here and there is to be found an exception,
however, to this rule; portions of the Erie railroad, and the whole
of the Hudson River, as well as that along the Rhine, necessarily
possessing the advantage of sharing in the sublimity and grace through
which they pass. Time will, of course, remedy the defects of the whole
arrangement; and a new front will be presented, as it may be, to the
traveller throughout the civilized world. Whether human ingenuity will
yet succeed in inventing substitutes for the smoke and other unpleasant
appliances of a railroad train, remains to be seen; but we think few
will be disposed to differ from us, when we say that in our view of
the matter this great improvement of modern intercourse has done very
little towards the embellishment of a country in the way of landscapes.
The graceful winding curvatures of the old highways, the acclivities
and declivities, the copses, meadows and woods, the half-hidden church,
nestling among the leaves of its elms and pines, the neat and secluded
hamlet, the farm-house, with all its comforts and sober arrangements,
so disposed as to greet the eye of the passenger, will long be
hopelessly looked for by him who flies through those scenes, which,
like a picture placed in a false light, no longer reflects the genius
and skill of the artist.
The old world enjoys an advantage as regards the picturesque and
pleasing, in connection with its towns, that is wholly unknown, unless
it may be in the way of exception, among ourselves. The necessity, in
the middle ages, of building for defence, and the want of artillery
before the invention of gunpowder, contributed to the construction
of military works for the protection of the towns in Europe, that
still remain, owing to their durable materials, often producing some
of the finest effects that the imagination could invent to embellish
a picture. Nothing of the sort, of course, is to be met with here,
for we have no castles, have never felt the necessity of fortified
towns, and had no existence at the period when works of this nature
came within the ordinary appliances of society. On the contrary,
the utilitarian spirit of the day labors to erase every inequality
from the surface of the American town, substituting convenience for
appearance. It is probable there is no one who, in the end, would not
give a preference to these new improvements for a permanent residence;
but it is not to be denied that so far as the landscape is concerned,
the customs of the middle ages constructed much the most picturesque
and striking collections of human habitations. Indeed, it is scarcely
possible for the mind to conceive of objects of this nature, that are
thrown together with finer effects, than are to be met with among the
mountainous regions, in particular, of Europe. We illustrate one or
two that are to be met with in the Apennines, and the Alps, and even
in Germany, as proofs of what we say. The eye, of itself, will teach
the reader, that Richmond and Boston, and Washington and Baltimore,
and half-a-dozen other American towns that do possess more or less of
an unequal surface, must yield the palm to those gloriously beautiful
objects of the old world. When it is remembered, too, how much time has
multiplied these last, it can be seen that there are large districts
in the mountain regions of the other hemisphere, that enjoy this
superiority over us, if superiority it can be called, to possess the
picturesque, at the expense of the convenient. The imagination can
scarcely equal the pictures of this nature that often meet the eye in
the southern countries of Europe. Villages, with the chiselled outlines
of castles, gray, sombre, but distinct, are often seen, perched on the
summits of rocky heights, or adhering, as it might be, to their sides,
in situations that are frequently even appalling, and which invariably
lend a character of peculiar beauty to the view. There are parts
of Europe in which the traveller encounters these objects in great
numbers, and if an American, they never fail to attract his attention,
as the wigwam and the bark canoe, and the prairie with lines of bisons,
would catch the eye of a wayfarer from the old world. To these humbler
mountain pictures, must be added many a castle and strong-hold, of
royal or semi-royal origin, that are met with on the summits of
abrupt and rocky eminences farther north. Germany has many of these
strong-holds, which are kept up to the present day, and which are found
to be useful as places of security, as they are certainly peculiar and
interesting in the landscape.
It has often been said by scientific writers, that this country affords
many signs of an origin more recent than the surface of Europe. The
proofs cited are the greater depths of the ravines wrought by the
action of the waters following the courses of the torrents, and the
greater and general aspect of antiquity that is impressed on natural
objects in the other hemisphere. This theory, however, has met with a
distinguished opponent in our own time. Without entering at all into
the merits of this controversy, we shall admit that to the ordinary eye
America generally is impressed with an air of freshness, youthfulness,
and in many instances, to use a coarse but expressive term, rawness,
that are seldom, if ever, met with in Europe. It might perhaps be easy
to account for this by the labors of man, alone, though we think that
natural objects contribute their full share towards deepening the
picture. We know of no mountain summits on this side of the Atlantic
that wear the hoary hues of hundreds that are seen on the other side
of the water; and nearly everywhere in this country that the eye rests
on a mountain-top, it encounters a rounded outline of no very decided
tints, unless, indeed, it may actually encounter verdure. To our eye,
this character of youthfulness is very strongly perceptible throughout
those portions of the republic with which we are personally acquainted,
and we say this without reference to the recent settlements, which
necessarily partake of this character, but to the oldest and most
finished of our own landscapes. The banks of the Hudson, for instance,
have not the impress of time as strongly marked on their heights and
headlands, and bays, and even mountains, as the banks of the Rhine; and
we have often even fancied that this distinguishing feature between
the old and new worlds is to be traced on nearly every object of
nature or art. Doubtless the latter has been the principal agent in
producing these effects; but it is undeniable that they form a leading
point of distinction in the general character of the scenery of the
two continents. As for England, it has a shorn and shaven aspect that
reminds one of the husbandman in his Sunday's attire; for we have seen
that island in February, when, owing to the great quantity of its grain
and the prevalent humidity of the atmosphere, it really appeared to us
to possess more verdure than it did in the subsequent July and August.
There is one feature in European scenery, generally, more prevalent,
however, in Catholic than in other countries, to which we must allude
before we close. The bourg, or town, with its gray castellated
outlines, and possibly with walls of the middle ages, is, almost
invariably, clustered around the high, pointed roofs and solemn towers
of the church. With us, how different is the effect! Half a dozen
ill-shaped, and yet pretending cupolas, and other ambitious objects,
half the time in painted wood, just peer above the village, while
the most aspiring roof is almost invariably that of the tavern. It
may be easy enough to account for this difference, and to offer a
sufficient apology for its existence. But to the observant lover of
the picturesque the effect is not only unpleasant but often repulsive.
No one of ordinary liberality would wish to interfere with freedom of
conscience in order to obtain fine landscapes; but this is one of the
hundred instances in which the thoughtful man finds reason to regret
that the church, as it exists among us, is not really more Catholic.
To conclude, we concede to Europe much the noblest scenery, in its
Alps, Pyrenees, and Apennines; in its objects of art, as a matter of
course; in all those effects which depend on time and association, in
its monuments, and in this impress of the past which may be said to be
reflected in its countenance; while we claim for America the freshness
of a most promising youth, and a species of natural radiance that
carries the mind with reverence to the source of all that is glorious
around us.
From the United Service Magazine
A BULL FIGHT AT RONDA.
The ride from Gibraltar to San Roque is familiar to all the inhabitants
of the rock, and notwithstanding that the soil, the natives, and their
costume vary much from similar objects in England, and that the plants
and scenery are totally of a foreign character, yet from the number
of English people on the road, one finds it difficult to believe
one's-self in Spain until on the other side of San Roque.
This last small town is prettily situated on a hill, about five miles
from Gibraltar. On passing the drawbridge which crosses the ditch
at the Landport point, we got on the isthmus which traverses the
inundation, situated at the North Front of this isolated fortress, and
which is the only avenue of access or egress. The approach to this
is also guarded by two strong outposts. The last of these, called
the old North Front, furnishes sentries which guard the intermediate
posts between it and the Spanish lines. On arriving at the end of the
isthmus, we crossed a place which is called the Neutral ground, and
reached a small village garrisoned by a wing of a Spanish regiment,
who are there stationed to intercept smugglers. On leaving the village
there is no regular road, but those wishing to proceed to Spain have
to ride or walk by the shore for a distance of about two miles, until
they reach a plain, which is crossed by a road leading to a small
village called Campo. This place is often resorted to by the gentry of
Gibraltar, who find it much cooler during summer than their residences
in the streets of the town. After passing this village, which had
certainly little of interest about it, we rode by a circuitous road,
generally hedged on each side by plants of the cactus and aloes, and
but little wooded, till we reached San Roque.
Here we saw in miniature what may be called a specimen of a Spanish
town; the windows at the lower story of the houses barred with cages
of iron called _regas_, which completely obstruct all entrance by that
mode, rendering them in fact like jails. The streets paved with large
stones, quite dry, and disposed so irregularly as to make them the most
disagreeable to ride in that I ever witnessed. Then there was the small
alameda, with its walks, and trees quite neat and regular; where the
beauties of the rural town paced with their mantillas and fans: on the
other side was a barrack, which contained a Spanish regiment, who were
drilling and exercising when we arrived. These were swarthy-looking
fellows, mostly young and undersized.
As we rode away from the town we descended by a rugged stony road,
which was very rough, and in some places nearly precipitous. Our party
consisted of four officers besides myself, two mules containing our
clothes and provisions, and a guide and servant on horseback. We got
packed up in panniers all the loose beer and cold meat, tea, coffee,
sugar, biscuit, sausages, hams, and other edibles which we should
require for a week's consumption, and did not find that we had at all
exceeded our computation, for with the exception of eggs, fowls, milk,
butter, chocolate, and indifferent wine, we could get nothing in the
way of eating and drinking at the different villages we stopped at. Our
cavalcade was consequently delayed very much by being obliged to keep
with the mules. We went along this very rough and rugged stony track,
which could scarcely be called a road, for about two miles; we then
crossed some hills. The country for about three miles from San Roque
was quite open.
Here it was that we arrived at a mountain pass, which was very thickly
planted on each side with brushwood, shrubs, and fern. So thick and
impervious was the cover for those who might choose to lie in ambush,
that a band of many men, at least amounting to sixty, might have rested
concealed quite close to the path which we rode on. I am not disposed
to be credulous relative to stories which travellers tell on the
subject of hairbreadth escapes and adventures; but, certainly in this
country, more than any in Europe, there is presented a more continuous
series of scenes which one's fancy might suppose calculated to be the
resort of outlawed marauders or wandering bandits. I had heard numerous
accounts of parties having been waylaid, and of the danger consequent
upon travelling in Spain, and the disposition of the country people is
so prone to exaggerate, that every day adds a fresh instance to the
catalogue of incidents which those who listen to them hear recorded.
The nature of the scenery which we were passing through was such as to
recall to our mind the spirited groups of Salvator Rosa's coloring, or
the sketches so graphically described by Cervantes or Le Sage.
We had not ridden further than a few yards when two men rushed from
the cover with their firelocks to their shoulders, and called out
"Alto, alto." Their action, their dress, the tone which they used
made me conclude that they were bandits, and I rode up to one of our
party, the only one who was armed (who carried a pair of pistols in
his saddlebags), and asked him to lend me one of them. He had not time
to answer before one of the men approached me with his firelock to his
shoulder, and said, in Spanish, "I can hit a sombrero at two hundred
yards distance." Another of our party advised me to answer him civilly,
for, he said, "I see four men from different quarters who have their
firelocks levelled at you." On this I demanded of him if he wanted
money, or wished for something to drink. He seemed more indignant
at this supposition, and informed us that he and his party were
carbineros or revenue officers, who were stationed there to intercept
any smugglers who might be proceeding into Spain. He said that he would
be obliged in any case to detain our mules, and that from what I had
said he should be obliged to keep us prisoners until he heard from
the Governor at Algeciras. Then the rest of his party all made their
appearance, each of them armed with firelock and pistols, and having
with them the mules belonging to one of the parties of officers who had
been going to Ronda. After a deal of altercation, we rode back with
them and decided upon the plan of sending two of our party to Algeciras
to the Governor, to ask him relative to the state of the case. It was
vexatious being delayed, but there was no help for it.
When the two officers started we were about twelve miles from
Algeciras. We then rode through a wild country much wooded with shrubs,
groves of oleanders, orange groves, hedges of grapes, and other
exotics, which are so rare and so much prized at home, and, crossing
two rivers, we reached the sea beach at some distance from Algeciras.
The mode of crossing the river was by large movable boats which had
pullies attached to their frames on deck, and ropes which were fastened
to the beams on shore at one end, and at the other to some leathern
thongs which the men fastened to their shoulders, and towing them on
board, soon passed the boat over from one bank to the other. When we
were on the beach, the leader of the party of carbineros fired his
piece at a gull which passed and wounded him, but the bird, who was
hit in the wing, rested on the water.
We did not ride far before our two friends returned, and heartily
welcome they were. They produced a paper signed by the Governor, a
Spanish General at Algeciras, which ordered our instant liberation;
they said that he was very indignant when he heard of our capture. The
leader of the party of carbineros on this was satisfied, and gave up
the pistols which he had captured from the officer who carried them,
and bid us farewell. We then had to ride to San Roque, and on our way
back, had much amusement in talking over our adventure. I was certainly
very glad that we had offered no resistance to these people; but had we
left our mules in their charge it would have been most inconvenient,
and in fact I think scarcely safe. The party which preceded us had
reason to be very thankful, for by our means they obtained safe
carriage for their mules, which they would not have seen for some days,
had it not been for our having come up with them. So we were obliged
to take up our quarters for that night at the inn at San Roque, which
was a nice clean place, and kept by an Englishman and his wife. It is
altogether much more like an English house in its accommodation than
a Spanish one, which, it is needless to add, is speaking much in its
praise. In the evening at dinner the principal topic of conversation
was this adventure of ours, and we heard some accounts of the modes of
travelling in Spain, and the direful amount of smuggling which exists
between its confines and Gibraltar, from an old inhabitant of the rock.
He told us a story of his having been stopped, and having his horse
taken from him, and being obliged to walk a number of miles. He never
saw the horse again, and never heard a word of the robbers who stopped
him, and yet he said that it happened at about six miles distance from
San Roque.
The next morning the weather was certainly beautiful, and numerous
parties came in from Gibraltar, to breakfast at San Roque, previous to
their long ride to Gaucin, a distance of thirty miles. The merriment
that prevailed, the novelty of the expected scenes, the beauty of the
wild romantic country they were about to enter, the good spirits and
freedom of manners of all, made every party seem exhilarated and happy.
Some were dressed in the style of the Spanish Majos, and armed with
pistols and daggers. The generality wore light jackets, sashes, and
trousers: also the sombrero was very much in use. The Spanish masta,
that most useful appendage to a traveller's equipment, was over most of
the saddles. We were all enabled to rest confident in the assurance of
not being molested or waylaid upon the road, as, being the regular day
for visitors to proceed to Ronda, the authorities had posted soldiers
in different parts of the road. We came up with and passed many groups
of Spaniards. The men were dressed with short jackets, sometimes laced,
and having a vast number of small buttons, large red sash, leggings
with rows of buttons all the way down on each side, and boltinas or
leathern hose worn open. They all wore the sombrero, and most of them
were armed with firelocks, slung from their shoulders. The colored
mantas, as usual, were strapped on the saddles, in order to render the
riding easy, to serve as a cloak in the event of rain, and to answer
for bed-clothes on their arrival at the Fonda, where they were going to
sleep. The ladies of the Spanish parties were mounted either on mules
or barricos seated on cushions, which were strapped on pads, placed
on the animals with two cross sticks on the shoulder and two on its
crupper. The ladies all wore mantillas, and with the exception of the
number of petticoats which they invariably wear, their dress did not
vary much from that of English country people. We passed through a
broken hilly country until we reached the cork-wood--that forest which
stretches for about ten miles from east to west, a most picturesque
spot, composed principally of cork-trees and some orange groves. At
about ten miles from San Roque we arrived at the Bocea de Leones,
that most dangerous pass, where the country was wild and the scenery
romantic. There were stationed here some Spanish cavalry who guarded
the pass. They were all fine able-bodied men, mounted on strong black
horses; they wore blue double-breasted coats, buff belts, jack-boots,
and large cocked hats. Past the cork-wood the country was broken and
hilly, thickly planted with shrubs and evergreens; reeds and brushwood
were also numerous. After this we got into a valley which was well
cultivated, and the plantations lay thickly studded with oleanders and
wild roses, and we saw frequently a white plant resembling the myrtle.
The grounds had a gay and fresh appearance. When we were passing one of
the fields where the laborers were at work we saw the curious manner in
which the lower order of Spaniards eat--their mess of _gaypacho_ was
in a large bowl, which was placed in the centre of a circle formed by
about sixty men, and each supplied with a spoon; they then dipped the
spoon into this capacious bowl, one after another, in regular routine,
until the food was finished.
We crossed about twelve different streams in going through this valley,
and soon after passing the last, we came to an orange grove, through
which the ride was agreeable. The delicious fruit was in abundance,
loading the trees on each side of the way, when we arrived at the
foot of the hill on which Gaucin is situated, and had an ascent of
nearly three miles, which was winding and rugged before we reached the
road leading into the town. The difficulty of the road, the nearly
impassable ascent of the cliffs, the circuitous track of the route,
made it a matter of surprise to us that a town such as this we were
approaching should have been built on a site where the supply of almost
any articles of merchandise was so inconvenient. Groups of hundreds of
children lined the passes calling out to us incessantly, "Oh tio om
cherito." We entered the town and were long before we could accommodate
ourselves with a night's lodging, which however at last we managed to
procure at the private house of a man who called himself a captain in
the Spanish army. It was very uncomfortable, although perhaps the best
that could be had in the town, and they charged exorbitantly. The town
is most picturesquely situated upon a lofty height. After our long
ride, which was over such a rough and broken country, we did not feel
much disposed to saunter about, but as the evening was far advanced we
stayed within doors. We procured merely the means of cooking, and milk,
eggs, and fowl; but the people made themselves very agreeable, and we
had great amusement and laughter. We set off early the next morning and
commenced by descending the lofty mound upon which the town is built,
by as tortuous and harassing a path as that by which we approached it.
However, after we had proceeded about two miles a vista of as romantic
and pleasing a kind as any I had ever seen in any other country opened
before me. In the continuous range of hills which lined the road, the
vineyards covered both the sides and tops for several miles around, and
the valleys in the distance were thickly planted with chestnut woods:
further on, the vast range of the ronda sierra lined the horizon.
The outline of these mountains was bold and their scenery grand. Their
sides and summits were studded throughout with towns, embosomed in the
vast woods of chestnuts. They loomed beautiful and picturesque in the
different intervals, and it wanted only water to render it an Elysium
upon earth. After keeping this in view for several miles, and through
a narrow and precipitous track, we came to a line of mountain scenery
where the hills were altogether barren, except where, far down their
sides, the corn fields were planted, where the road was much worse.
We saw another town which went by the name of Gaucin also, and had a
large redoubt to defend it, on its right flank; then the route circled
round the mountains towards Attogate. We could not take our horses
out of a foot pace, and very often I dismounted to lead mine down the
craggy rocks. No horses but those shod in the Spanish fashion could
manage to get through these descents. Towards the entrance of Attogate
it was rather more uneven and dangerous, and I heard that one of the
horsemen of the party that preceded us had been thrown. We passed
through the miserable village, which was as wretched as any thing that
I had ever seen even in Ireland, and went on still by a mountain path,
and round by lofty hills, for about three miles. We then got sight of
a very spacious plain, like an immense amphitheatre; to the west and
to the east were the ranges of the Ronda hills, and to the north, as
we approached, was a precipitous cliff of about two thousand feet in
height, upon the summit of which was situated the town of Ronda. This
seemed at the distance like a large perpendicular mass of earth. From
the first place where we viewed it until our entrance to the town, the
road or path was even more rugged than that which we traversed during
most part of the day.
We entered the old town and passed the remains of many Moorish ruins,
through a stony street, with houses built like most of the Spanish
ones, and came to a large bridge which crossed a ravine through which
the river flows. This bridge is at a height of about one thousand feet
from the level of the river. We then passed through the plaza and came
to the street where we found a lodging. As the bull fights were not to
commence until four P.M., the next day, we had a little leisure to look
about us. In the streets all the crowded shops showed that an unusual
influx of strangers had come to visit the place. We saw some splendid
houses; one I particularly remarked, which belonged to the Marquis
de Salvittierra; its lofty gateway of stone covered with devices and
figures in alto-relievo, reminded me, with the motto inscribed over the
summit of its arch, of the entrance to an Eastern palace. My companion,
who was taking a sketch of it, after he had finished his labor was
standing with me admiring this arch, which had evidently been the work
of the Saracen invaders, when we saw two ladies in mantillas, both
daughters of the late Marquis, who were walking towards its entrance.
We told them in Spanish that we were foreigners--Englishmen, who had
come to Ronda to visit it during the time of the fair, and in place
of being annoyed at our seeming forwardness in thus addressing them,
they invited us into the house. We went through corridors, futios, and
up the staircase, which was ornamented with some tolerable paintings,
and entered into one of the salas, or large rooms. When we arrived
the two graceful girls, one of whom was about twenty and the other
about sixteen, stood with their arms folded before them, and their
head slightly bowing. They had each large fans in their hands. Their
dress was stylish; their slippers beautiful and small; their black lace
mantillas waving round their hair; their dress completely of black,
made their figures seem elegant and their countenances interesting.
Their eyes had the deep languor of the southern aspect, more than
the playful loveliness which frequently is seen with those of their
age. Their features were regular, and their teeth, which they showed
in smiling to us when we entered, were of dazzling whiteness. I
recollected the Spanish words used in salutation, viz.: "A los fies di
usted mi senorita," and on hearing it in the foreign accent it was
great amusement to them, as they repeated it from one to the other.
We conversed on various subjects relative to the town, the scenery,
the approaching feasts, the bull fights, and after a little time took
our leave, charmed with their agreeable and pleasing conversation. All
the halls, corridors, and chambers of this palace were adorned with
pictures, but the rooms were furnished rather scantily, as seems the
Spanish custom.
In the evening we went to the Alameda, where we saw numerous groups
of Spanish beauties promenading. Certainly no female figures which I
have ever met with look better than the Spanish women. Their walk has
been often noticed by different writers, and yet I have never read
any description that does it justice. It is not the least like the
affected wriggling gait of the French women or the frigid stride of the
English, but a light, graceful step combining elegance and ease. They
all seem to walk in the same way, and as it forms a great part of their
daily occupation, it is no wonder that they should excel in it. Their
language of the fans is another peculiarity of the country. I was shown
it by a lady; it is a series of signs by which a lady lets the man who
looks at her know what her wishes are, either of disdain, reproof, or
encouragement, and is well known and recognized. I should recommend
every gentleman who wishes to stay in the country to learn it.
We met our two charming friends, the Spanish Marquis's daughters, and
walked with them on the Alameda until it was dark. The grounds are
prettily laid out, and the view from the western height which overlooks
the precipitous descent which I spoke of, viewed from a distance, is
truly superb. There the winding stream and the country which bounds it
embrace the foot of the perpendicular declivity.
The next day we heard nothing but preparations for the grand show,
which was to take place in a circus exactly opposite the lodging we
had got into. The Spanish cavalry, dressed in yellow coats and large
jack-boots, lined the streets and played their band in front of our
windows. All orders and classes, young and old, dressed in their gayest
costume, were seen going about the town. The persons who lived in our
house, who were a Spanish officer and his family, all got tickets of
admission which we paid for. The box or partition which we hired, we
took in common with the officers of another regiment, who had also
ridden over from Gibraltar to witness the bull fights.
The arena when we entered was surrounded by a concourse of about 1,500
people, many of whom were ladies, but the majority of the meaner
orders. The amphitheatre or plaza, as it is called by the Spaniards,
was about the same size as that at Milan. The architecture had,
however, no resemblance to that of the Italian city. The diameter was
about 200 feet. Various writers have noticed the interest which the
Spaniards take in these sights; and the multitude which surrounded the
amphitheatre, seated either in the boxes or standing in the tiers,
which were level with the arena of combat, all seemed eagerly expectant
of the arrival of the different actors in the scene.
About a quarter past four in the afternoon, a trumpet sounded, and on
the opening of the side doors, five picadors entered, followed at a few
paces by three mules abreast, drawing a pole like a swingle tree, with
a chain attached to it. They were mounted each on a sorry, miserable
hack-horse. They were dressed in yellow jackets, covered with beads
of silver and all sorts of ornaments; broad white sombreros, decked
all round with ribbons, yellow chamois leather trowsers, stuffed
out with cork and cotton, and coated inside the leather with iron
plates. After the mules with their car, came the three matadors, in
order. Their dress was perfectly superb; it was a close fitting majos
dress, ornamented with silver lacing and beading. The names of these
matadors were Montes, Espesa, and Ximenes. The first wore a beautiful
rose-colored tunic, and his hair tied behind with ribbons, and
crimson-colored leggings, &c. The dress of the second was of the same
form, only varying in color, being all pink. The dress of the third was
also the same in cut, but of a black color. These three, as well as the
chulos, wore silk stockings. The chulos followed next in succession,
and were dressed similar to the matadors, but not so grandly. They,
as well as the matadors, all carried a large cloth, of silk texture,
which was either red, blue, or yellow. The chulos were about five in
number. They all advanced across the arena to where the Alcalde was
seated, whilst the trumpets sounded, and as soon as these ceased to
blow, the mules with their car left the arena by the same door as that
by which they arrived, and the remainder of the procession dispersed
to the different parts of the circus. After a lapse of two or three
minutes, the centre door opened, and a furious black bull rushed in
the most impetuous manner into the circus, and charged the different
picadors. The first was not hurt, but the second and third picador had
their horses ripped open. This was really a most revolting sight, for
even after these cruel inflictions upon the poor horses, and when their
entrails were hanging out, the picadors who rode them goaded them still
onwards. The attendants in the circus joined in this act of cruelty. I
do not think that Byron was far wrong in saying of these sights--
"Such the ungentle sport that oft invites
The Spanish maid and cheers the Spanish swain.
Nurtured in blood, betimes, his heart delights
In vengeance, gloating on another's pain."
The fourth picador broke his spear in meeting the rushing of this bull.
The bull bled much from this, and at the fifth charge he ripped up
another horse. I watched every turn of the "hearty fight," and noted
it in my tablet. Though not quite what I considered in my English ideas
as _sport_, yet it was altogether so novel that I question if I ever
joined in a hunt which gave me greater interest. It would, however, be
extremely unjust to make any comparison between our manly sport and
this cruel spectacle, or even to mention them in the same breath.
The chulos now began at intervals to provoke the bull by advancing
towards him with their colored cloaks spread, and urging him to follow
them. Their activity was most remarkable. Whenever the bull approached
them close, they left their cloaks, and vaulted up the partition. One
of them, whom I saw pressed quite close, jumped clean over the bull's
head, and many such feats of agility we saw, both at this time and
during the whole of the exhibition. After several efforts made to
provoke him, the bull jumped over the wooden partition which separated
the amphitheatre from the arena, a height of about five feet, called
by the Spaniards the barrero. Of course this caused much terror and
sensation, as many were standing quite close, and the rush was quite
awful: however, after running half round, he jumped into the circus
again. He then struck a picador, leaped the inclosure, and stayed a
shorter time than at first, when he again jumped out, after several
attempts on the part of the chulos to provoke him, and when he appeared
wearied and fainter from his exertions and from the loss of blood.
On this the Alcalde caused the trumpets to sound and the banderilleros
came in, each carrying two stakes about a yard long and fringed with
short flags. They ran close to the animal, and plunged these stakes,
called banderillos, into the bull's shoulders. Four of these were let
fly and plunged into his flesh, and the trumpets again sounded for
the matadors to stick him with a sword. Montes undertook this bull,
and drawing a long sword, he stood before him until the bull got near
enough, when he stuck him between the shoulders. The chulos provoked
him a second time, and Montes again wounded him. The attack of the
chulos was repeated, when Montes planted his sword in the animal's
shoulder, but instantly withdrew it. Twice more the chulos came to
the attack, and on each occasion the bull's shoulder was laid open by
Montes, but at the sixth onslaught, the matador plunged his sword up
to the hilt in the mangled flesh, and the bull fell. Then entered a
man dressed like a chulo, with a dagger called a puntilla, and which
gave to its owner the designation of a puntillero, and struck it in the
neck of the prostrate animal, which immediately expired. When this was
ascertained, the mules who had formed part of the opening procession,
and had then withdrawn, reappeared, and the carcase of the bull was
tied to the swingle tree, and dragged out of the arena.
Seven other bulls were brought out in succession, and attacked in the
same manner, with a little variation in the details. The second bull
charged two picadors, and did them no damage, but in a third charge he
lamed a picador's horse, and received himself a serious gash in the
neck. At a fourth charge he ripped open a horse's bowels, and coming
on for the fifth and sixth time, threw the horse of another picador
prostrate, and when he was on the ground, dug his horns into the bowels
of the horse in a most frightful manner. I was never more forcibly
reminded of Homer's description of the wolves, who in their charge
upon the flock, seize with such fiendish fierceness #"kai enkata panta
laphyssei."#
The matador who undertook the third bull had but one eye, and,
to render the combat equal, one of the bull's eyes was blinded,
an expedient worthy of its cruel inventors. I remarked nothing
extraordinary about the baiting or slaughter of this bull, except that
one of the chulos, in flying from him, had his clothes torn off, and
narrowly escaped being gored.
The sixth bull was a very strong one. In his charges he disabled two
picadors, both of whom were obliged to be removed from the arena,
and one was perfectly senseless. The infuriated animal then charged
a horse, which he killed instantaneously. The mules which I spoke of
before, came in, and bore away the horse's carcase. Meanwhile the third
matador, Ximenes, struck the bull with a sword up to the hilt, and
killed him. He got his ear as a trophy, which he held up in triumph,
and was saluted with innumerable vivas from the boxes of the Spanish
Senoritas, some of whom wore black, and some white lace mantillas.
"Lesa lo dey," also was shouted loudly, meaning, let him have the bull
for his courage. As one of the classic writers has it, it turned out
"Vox populi vox Dei," for the hero was awarded the prize.
The seventh bull was considered a slow one by the audience, and they
commenced shouting out "fuego, fuego." So when the banderilleros were
directed to throw their arrows, they fastened squibs and crackers in
various parts of the arrow or banderillo, and, on their exploding, the
frantic animal went racing round the arena, goaded to madness by the
crackers, which continued to go off at every step. This bull was given
over to Montes to kill, as a very difficult subject, and the intrepid
matador made one or two attempts before he succeeded in closing with
him. The last time he plunged his sword between his shoulders, and the
bull dropped dead.
The eighth bull was killed after two thrusts, and then the large
concourse of people flocked into the circus, and shortly afterwards,
it being 7 o'clock, almost every one proceeded on to the Alameda.
Next morning, the bull fights were resumed, and the sport, if I may
call it by so mild a name, was considered superior. The matadors were
differently dressed, and I remarked that all the picadors' horses were
blindfolded. Montes, the first time of their contact, drove his sword
into the neck of the first bull, a remarkably fine and very fierce
animal, and it died in a few seconds afterwards. Four other bulls
followed in order, and were all overcome. But the contest of the day
was with the sixth bull. This savage animal killed a horse at his first
charge. He then flew at another, and gored its sides in a frightful
manner, completely lifting the rider off its back. The unfortunate
picador was carried out, apparently dead. The bull then broke a
horse's forearm, and charging another, ripped it open, though its
rider escaped, and, being mounted afresh, behaved in the most heroic
way, proving, himself, in fact, quite the lion of the day, whose feats
excited the wonder and the applause of the multitude. He approached the
box where we were seated, and threw his hat down. Showers of gold and
dollars, amounting I should think to about 80, rewarded his compliments
"a los Engless." He acknowledged this, by saying that our kindness
should be always remembered. This bull was tormented a long time, and
certainly the cruelty exhibited was most repulsive. The people quite
exulted in the way they drew out the barbed darts from the creature's
back, and thrust them in again, in every way that could torture him
most. He was, however, at last killed by Montes, after a number of
thrusts. After he had been struck the third time by Montes, the blood
gushed out from his mouth in torrents, and in about seven seconds he
died. In the baiting of the eighth bull, the same picador showed his
dexterity. In the third charge which he made, he killed a horse. At
first he brought the horse to the ground, and rolled him over as he
would a cat; then, having dug his horns into his bowels for some time,
at last left him for dead. Two other bulls followed, and with the death
of the last, the spectacle terminated.
The third day was appropriated to the exhibition of the first rudiments
of bull-fighting, and was a regular gala for the more youthful portion
of the community. There is no parallel to this practice at present
existing in any part of Europe. The prize-fighting which till lately
prevailed in England, independent of the heartiness, and emulative
courage of the combatants, was a barbarism of quite another kind, the
excitement of which was enhanced by the scope it allowed for gambling.
But in bull-fighting there is no chance of making money, nor are wagers
ever laid upon the combatants. The spectacle, in fact, is more like
the games that took place in imperial Rome, which argue a brutality of
feeling worthy of those degraded and sensual times.
The third day there were no matadors, picadors, or chulos, but to the
youthful part of the populace, it was one of the most pleasant. The
bulls were allowed to enter, and were chased here and there by the
populace with sticks. There was a good deal of childish folly and
mountebank frivolity in these exhibitions. After the bull had been
tormented for about twenty minutes, he was allowed to leave the circus,
and they brought in a large tame one, with a bell round his neck, who
was followed immediately by the young ones. One of the small bulls
who was baited in this way, jumped over the barrier; but being much
worried, soon jumped back.
The people moved about the circus, laughing and running, and seemed
like schoolboys just allowed out to play, after the hours of study were
finished. It seemed to me that the reputed gravity of the Spaniards did
not at all extend to the lower orders, or to the women, whose mirth,
animation, and playfulness of manner are very striking. The third bull
was killed, and this one was the only sacrifice to the sanguinary
tastes of the people.
Two large, high, basket-like gabions were afterwards brought in, when
two men entered them up to the arms, and it was great diversion to the
people to see the bulls, who were successively led into the arena, and
whose horns were covered with leather, tossing these baskets about. The
men who were inside had got banderillos, which they stuck in the bull's
back when he came up to them. This lasted for some time, but at last
the crowd grew weary of it, and dispersed.
On this day, Charpur (who certainly was the hero of the play),
exhibited his dexterity as a chulos in the scene where the bull killing
took place. One of the novices, who was being educated as a matador,
drove his sword through the bull's neck, up to the hilt, transfixing a
portion of the flesh, and leaving the blade dangling from it. Charpur
went up to the bull, and, partly by his cloak and partly by his
menaces, led him towards the barrera, when he seized hold of his tail,
and holding on by his back, approached his neck, and coolly took the
sword out, which he threw on the ground.
Such is the recreation, and such the feats, which are the theme of
praise and topic of conversation amongst the Spanish people, who
discourse of it as we do of the races at Ascot or Newmarket, or any
other resort of the men on the turf. But I certainly did not see one
English lady there, notwithstanding the numbers of Spanish mantillas
which might have kept them in countenance.
"Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,
But formed for all the witching arts of love;
In softness and in firmness far above
Remoter females, famed for sickening prate."
This, by what I can learn, is the only remnant of the ancient fights
which the Goths must have learned from the Romans; cruel and barbarous
exhibitions, much "more honored in the breach than in the observance."
The next day we passed in walking about the town. We entered a church,
which was built of soft granite, and the internal structure of which
reminded me of some that I had seen in Florence and Milan. The arches
were Gothic; the columns that supported the cupolas inside, and the
different domes into which the aisle was divided, were massive and
grand. The paintings seemed not to be from the hands of masters; and
the altars, which at a distance seemed so gorgeous, had rather a tinsel
glittering sort of appearance on near approach, such as would be called
familiarly "gingerbread shows"--but it was very lofty and extensive.
We went next to see the old Moorish palace. Here a staircase, very much
dilapidated, led from the interior to the edge of the small river which
runs through the whole of Ronda. The town being divided by a very deep
ravine, at the bottom of which the river flows, and which is crossed
by three bridges. Down this staircase, damp, gloomy, and intricate as
it was, we descended, and a guide preceded us with a candle, which,
however, scarcely gave us light enough to see our way down the dark and
slippery descent. It was constructed, according to the instruction of
our cicerone, in the year 800, by one of the Moorish kings, who had it
built for the purpose of supplying his palace with water. At the foot
of it we came to a sort of window, which going through, we stepped out
by the river's side. I ought to mention that at intervals we passed
the remains of large chambers and other vaulted apartments, which must
evidently have been prisons as dark and loathsome as any which Mrs.
Radcliffe, or any other horror-loving romancer, could draw from a
morbid imagination. We had to return the same way.
Quitting the palace, we passed through the part of the town which leads
by the Marquis of Salvatierras' house, and went on to the fountain,
which springs from the solid rock in the midst of the ravine. We
then returned homewards. In the evening our fair hostess amused us
with singing, dancing, and conversation. One night we had a party of
Gipsies, or, as they are called, Rectanos, to dance. They are a curious
set of beings, and their habits are as strange as their appearance.
They, to me, were very plain, and of a brown color; the men very dark,
with long matted beards. They danced the fandangoe, in which a man and
woman get up, and moving castanets with their hands, performed such
evolutions as, to speak in the mildest way, would greatly astonish
English spectators. I was much disappointed with it, as I saw nothing
graceful in their movements. All the time they were figuring and
lifting their limbs, the party seated kept time with their castanets.
At intervals they sang when they were dancing, which reminded me of the
nautch-girls in India. They would drink nothing except Rosaria, a sort
of stuff distilled from limes, partaking, however, of sweetmeats which
were handed round to them, and which they relished so much, that they
had a scramble for them. The dress of the women was very gaudy, and of
various colors.
I did not think much of these people, but I like what I have seen of
the Spanish ladies very much. Their manners are lively, unaffected,
and pleasing. The night after this, we went to a party which was given
by some officers of another regiment. Here again I had an opportunity
of seeing the manners of the Spanish ladies, which were certainly very
pleasing.
The next day at 11, we once more mounted our horses, and bidding adieu
to our fair hostess, we left the town, the beauties of which have been
amply dilated upon by different writers. We pursued the same route as
that by which we came, and arrived at Gibraltar a few minutes after the
evening gun gave notice of the time to shut the gates of the fortress.
From Chamber's Edinburgh Journal.
VAGARIES OF THE IMAGINATION.
"Fancy it burgundy," said Boniface of his ale--"only fancy it, and
it is worth a guinea a quart!" Boniface was a philosopher: fancy can
do much more than that. Those who fancy themselves laboring under an
affection of the heart are not slow in verifying the apprehension:
the uneasy and constant watching of its pulsations soon disturbs the
circulation, and malady may ensue beyond the power of medicine. Some
physicians believe that inflammation can be induced in any part of
the body by a fearful attention being continually directed towards
it; indeed it has been a question with some whether the stigmata (the
marks of the wounds of our Saviour) may not have been produced on the
devotee by the influences of an excited imagination. The hypochondriac
has been known to expire when forced to pass through a door which he
fancied too narrow to admit his person. The story of the criminal who,
unconscious of the arrival of the reprieve, died under the stroke
of a wet handkerchief, believing it to be the axe, is well known.
Paracelsus held, "that there is in man an imagination which really
affects and brings to pass the things that did not before exist; for a
man by imagination willing to move his body moves it in fact, and by
his imagination and the commerce of invisible powers he may also move
another body." Paracelsus would not have been surprised at the feats
of electro-biology. He exhorts his patients to have "a good faith, a
strong imagination, and they shall find the effects." "All doubt," he
says, "destroys work, and leaves it imperfect in the wise designs of
nature: it is from faith that imagination draws its strength, it is
by faith it becomes complete and realized; he who believeth in nature
will obtain from nature to the extent of his faith, and let the object
of this faith be real or imaginary, he nevertheless reaps similar
results--and hence the cause of superstition."
So early as 1462 Pomponatus of Mantua came to the conclusion, in his
work on incantation, that all the arts of sorcery and witchcraft
were the result of natural operations. He conceived that it was not
improbable that external means, called into action by the soul, might
relieve our sufferings, and that there did, moreover, exist individuals
endowed with salutary properties; so it might, therefore, be easily
conceived that marvellous effects should be produced by the imagination
and by confidence, more especially when these are reciprocal between
the patient and the person who assists his recovery. Two years after,
the same opinion was advanced by Agrippa in Cologne. "The soul," he
said, "if inflamed by a fervent imagination, could dispense health and
disease, not only in the individual himself, but in other bodies."
However absurd these opinions may have been considered, or looked on as
enthusiastic, the time has come when they will be gravely examined.
That medical professors have at all times believed the imagination
to possess a strange and powerful influence over mind and body is
proved by their writings, by some of their prescriptions, and by their
oft-repeated direction in the sick-chamber to divert the patient's
mind from dwelling on his own state and from attending to the symptoms
of his complaint. They consider the reading of medical books which
accurately describe the symptoms of various complaints as likely to
have an injurious effect, not only on the delicate but on persons in
full health; and they are conscious how many died during the time of
the plague and the cholera, not only of these diseases but from the
dread of them, which brought on all the fatal symptoms. So evident was
the effect produced by the detailed accounts of the cholera in the
public papers in the year 1849, that it was found absolutely necessary
to restrain the publications on the subject. The illusions under
which vast numbers acted and suffered have gone, indeed, to the most
extravagant extent; individuals, not merely single but in communities,
have actually believed in their own transformation. A nobleman of the
court of Louis XIV. fancied himself a dog, and would pop his head out
of the window to bark at the passengers; while the barking disease at
the camp-meetings of the Methodists of North America has been described
as "extravagant beyond belief." Rollin and Hecquet have recorded a
malady by which the inmates of an extensive convent near Paris were
attacked simultaneously every day at the same hour, when they believed
themselves transformed into cats, and a universal mewing was kept up
throughout the convent for some hours. But of all dreadful forms which
this strange hallucination took, none was so terrible as that of the
lycanthropy, which at one period spread through Europe; in which the
unhappy sufferers, believing themselves wolves, went prowling round the
forests uttering the most terrific howlings, carrying off lambs from
the flocks, and gnawing dead bodies in their graves.
While every day's experience adds some new proof of the influence
possessed by the imagination over the body, the supposed effect of
contagion has become a question of doubt. Lately, at a meeting in
Edinburgh, Professor Dick gave it as his opinion that there was no
such thing as hydrophobia in the lower animals: "what went properly by
that name was simply an inflammation of the brain; and the disease, in
the case of human beings, was caused by an over-excited imagination,
worked upon by the popular delusion on the effects of a bite by rabid
animals." The following paragraph from the "Curiosities of Medicine"
appears to justify this now common enough opinion:--"Several persons
had been bitten by a rabid dog in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and three
of them had died in our hospital. A report, however, was prevalent
that we kept a mixture which would effectually prevent their fatal
termination; and no less than six applicants who had been bitten were
served with a draught of colored water, and in no one instance did
hydrophobia ensue."
A remarkable cure through a similar aid of the imagination took place
in a patient of Dr. Beddoes, who was at that time very sanguine about
the effect of nitrous acid gas in paralytic cases. Anxious that it
should be imbibed by one of his patients, he sent an invalid to Sir
Humphry Davy, with a request that he would administer the gas. Sir
Humphry put the bulb of the thermometer under the tongue of the
paralytic, to ascertain the temperature of the body, that he might be
sure whether it would be affected at all by the inhalation of the gas.
The patient, full of faith from what the enthusiastic physician had
assured him would be the result, and believing that the thermometer was
what was to effect the cure, exclaimed at once that he felt better. Sir
Humphry, anxious to see what imagination would do in such a case, did
not attempt to undeceive the man, but saying that he had done enough
for him that day, desired him to be with him the next morning. The
thermometer was then applied as it had been the day before, and for
every day during a fortnight--at the end of which time the patient was
perfectly cured.
Perhaps there is nothing on record more curious of this kind than the
cures unwittingly performed by Chief-Justice Holt. It seems that for
a youthful frolic he and his companions had put up at a country inn;
they, however, found themselves without the means of defraying their
expenses, and were at a loss to know what they should do in such an
emergency. Holt, however, perceived that the innkeeper's daughter
looked very ill, and on inquiring what was the matter, learned that she
had the ague; when, passing himself off for a medical student, he said
that he had an infallible cure for the complaint. He then collected a
number of plants, mixed them up with various ceremonies, and inclosed
them in parchment, on which he scrawled divers cabalistic characters.
When all was completed, he suspended the amulet round the neck of the
young woman, and, strange to say, the ague left her and never returned.
The landlord, grateful for the restoration of his daughter, not only
declined receiving any payment from the youths, but pressed them to
remain as long as they pleased. Many years after, when Holt was on the
bench, a woman was brought before him, charged with witchcraft: she was
accused of curing the ague by charms. All she said in defence was, that
she did possess a ball which was a sovereign remedy in the complaint.
The charm was produced and handed to the judge, who recognized the very
ball which he had himself compounded in his boyish days, when out of
mere fun he had assumed the character of a medical practitioner.
Many distinguished physicians have candidly confessed that they
preferred confidence to art. Faith in the remedy is often not only half
the cure, but the whole cure. Madame de Genlis tells of a girl who had
lost the use of her leg for five years, and could only move with the
help of crutches, while her back had to be supported: she was in such
a pitiable state of weakness, the physicians had pronounced her case
incurable. She, however, took it into her head that if she was taken
to Notre Dame de Liesse she would certainly recover. It was fifteen
leagues from Carlepont where she lived. She was placed in the cart
which her father drove, while her sister sat by her supporting her
back. The moment the steeple of Notre Dame de Liesse was in sight she
uttered an exclamation, and said that her leg was getting well. She
alighted from the car without assistance, and no longer requiring the
help of crutches, she ran into the church. When she returned home the
villagers gathered about her, scarcely believing that it was indeed
the girl who had left them in such a wretched state, now they saw her
running and bounding along, no longer a cripple, but as active as any
among them.
Not less extraordinary are the cures which are effected by some sudden
agitation. An alarm of fire has been known to restore a patient
entirely, or for a time, from a tedious illness: it is no uncommon
thing to hear of the victim of a severe fit of the gout, whose feet
have been utterly powerless, running nimbly away from some approaching
danger. Poor Grimaldi in his declining years had almost quite lost the
use of his limbs owing to the most hopeless debility. As he sat one day
by the bedside of his wife, who was ill, word was brought to him that a
friend waited below to see him. He got down to the parlor with extreme
difficulty. His friend was the bearer of heavy news which he dreaded to
communicate: it was the death of Grimaldi's son, who, though reckless
and worthless, was fondly loved by the poor father. The intelligence
was broken as gently as such a sad event could be: but in an instant
Grimaldi sprung from his chair--his lassitude and debility were gone,
his breathing, which had for a long time been difficult, became
perfectly easy--he was hardly a moment in bounding up the stairs which
but a quarter of an hour before he had passed with extreme difficulty
in ten minutes; he reached the bedside, and told his wife that their
son was dead; and as she burst into an agony of grief he flung himself
into a chair, and became instantaneously, as it has been touchingly
described, "an enfeebled and crippled old man."
The imagination, which is remarkable for its ungovernable influence,
comes into action on some occasions periodically with the most precise
regularity. A friend once told us of a young relation who was subject
to nervous attacks: she was spending some time at the seaside for
change of air, but the evening-gun, fired from the vessel in the bay at
eight o'clock, was always the signal for a nervous attack: the instant
the report was heard she fell back insensible, as if she had been
shot. Those about her endeavored if possible to withdraw her thoughts
from the expected moment: at length one evening they succeeded, and
while she was engaged in an interesting conversation the evening-gun
was unnoticed. By and by she asked the hour, and appeared uneasy when
she found the time had passed. The next evening it was evident that
she would not let her attention be withdrawn: the gun fired, and she
swooned away; and when revived, another fainting fit succeeded, as if
it were to make up for the omission of the preceding evening! It is
told of the great tragic actress Clairon, who had been the innocent
cause of the suicide of a man who destroyed himself by a pistol-shot,
that ever after, at the exact moment when the fatal deed had been
perpetrated--one o'clock in the morning--she heard the shot. If asleep,
it awakened her; if engaged in conversation, it interrupted her; in
solitude or in company, at home or travelling, in the midst of revelry
or at her devotions, she was sure to hear it to the very moment.
The same indelible impression has been made in hundreds of cases, and
on persons of every variety of temperament and every pursuit, whether
engaged in business, science or art, or rapt in holy contemplation.
On one occasion Pascal had been thrown down on a bridge which had
no parapet, and his imagination was so haunted for ever after by
the danger, that he always fancied himself on the brink of a steep
precipice overhanging an abyss ready to ingulf him. This illusion
had taken such possession of his mind that the friends who came to
converse with him were obliged to place the chairs on which they seated
themselves between him and the fancied danger. But the effects of
terror are the best known of all the vagaries of the imagination.
A very remarkable case of the influence of imagination occurred between
sixty and seventy years since in Dublin, connected with the celebrated
frolics of Dalkey Island. It is said Curran and his gay companions
delighted to spend a day there, and that with them originated the
frolic of electing "a king of Dalkey and the adjacent islands," and
appointing his chancellor and all the officers of state. A man in the
middle rank of life, universally respected, and remarkable alike for
kindly and generous feelings and a convivial spirit, was unanimously
elected to fill the throne. He entered with his whole heart into all
the humors of the pastime, in which the citizens of Dublin so long
delighted. A journal was kept, called the "Dalkey Gazette," in which
all public proceedings were inserted, and it afforded great amusement
to its conductors. But the mock pageantry, the affected loyalty, and
the pretended homage of his subjects, at length began to excite the
imagination of "King John," as he was called. Fiction at length became
with him reality, and he fancied himself "every inch a king." His
family and friends perceived with dismay and deep sorrow the strange
delusion which nothing could shake: he would speak on no subject save
the kingdom of Dalkey and its government, and he loved to dwell on the
various projects he had in contemplation for the benefit of his people,
and boasted of his high prerogative: he never could conceive himself
divested for one moment of his royal powers, and exacted the most
profound deference to his kingly authority. The last year and a half of
his life were spent in Swift's hospital for lunatics. He felt his last
hours approaching, but no gleam of returning reason marked the parting
scene: to the very last instant he believed himself a king, and all his
cares and anxieties were for his people. He spoke in high terms of his
chancellor, his attorney-general, and all his officers of state, and of
the dignitaries of the church: he recommended them to his kingdom, and
trusted they might all retain the high offices which they now held. He
spoke on the subject with a dignified calmness well becoming the solemn
leave-taking of a monarch; but when he came to speak of the crown he
was about to relinquish for ever, his feelings were quite overcome, and
the tears rolled down his cheeks: "I leave it," said he, "to my people,
and to him whom they may elect as my successor!" This remarkable scene
is recorded in some of the notices of deaths for the year 1788. The
delusion, though most painful to his friends, was far from an unhappy
one to its victim: his feelings were gratified to the last while
thinking he was occupied with the good of his fellow-creatures--an
occupation best suited to his benevolent disposition.
From Household Words.
THE FRENCH FLOWER GIRL.
I was lingering listlessly over a cup of coffee on the Boulevard des
Italiens, in June. At that moment I had neither profound nor useful
resources of thought. I sat simply conscious of the cool air, the blue
sky, the white houses, the lights, and the lions, which combine to
render that universally pleasant period known as "after dinner," so
peculiarly agreeable in Paris.
In this mood my eyes fell upon a pair of orbs fixed intently upon
me. Whether the process was effected by the eyes, or by some pretty
little fingers, simply, I cannot say; but, at the same moment, a rose
was insinuated into my button-hole, a gentle voice addressed me, and
I beheld, in connection with the eyes, the fingers, and the voice, a
girl. She carried on her arm a basket of flowers, and was, literally,
nothing more nor less than one of the _Bouquetières_ who fly along the
Boulevards like butterflies, with the difference that they turn their
favorite flowers to a more practical account.
Following the example of some other distracted _décorés_, who I found
were sharing my honors, I placed a piece of money--I believe, in my
case, it was silver--in the hand of the girl; and, receiving about five
hundred times its value, in the shape of a smile and a "_Merci bien
Monsieur!_" was again left alone--("desolate," a Frenchman would have
said)--in the crowded and carousing Boulevard.
To meet a perambulating and persuasive _Bouquetière_ who places a
flower in your coat and waits for a pecuniary acknowledgment, is
scarcely a rare adventure in Paris; but I was interested--unaccountably
so--in this young girl: her whole manner and bearing was so different
and distinct from all others of her calling. Without any of that
appearance which, in England, we are accustomed to call "theatrical,"
she was such a being as we can scarcely believe in out of a ballet.
Not, however, that her attire departed--except, perhaps, in a certain
coquettish simplicity--from the conventional mode: its only decorations
seemed to be ribbons, which also gave a character to the little cap
that perched itself with such apparent insecurity upon her head. Living
a life that seemed one long summer's day--one floral _fête_--with a
means of existence that seemed so frail and immaterial--she conveyed an
impression of _unreality_. She might be likened to a Nymph, or a Naiad,
but for the certain something that brought you back to the theatre,
intoxicating the senses, at once, with the strange, indescribable
fascinations of hot chandeliers--close and perfumed air--footlights,
and fiddlers.
Evening after evening I saw the same girl--generally at the same
place--and, it may be readily imagined, became one of the most constant
of her _clientelle_. I learned, too, as many facts relating to her as
could be learned where most was mystery. Her peculiar and persuasive
mode of disposing of her flowers (a mode which has since become worse
than vulgarized by bad imitators) was originally her own graceful
instinct--or whim, if you will. It was something new and natural, and
amused many, while it displeased none. The sternest of stockbrokers,
even, could not choose but be decorated. Accordingly, this new Nydia
of Thessaly went out with her basket one day, awoke next morning, and
found herself famous.
Meantime there was much discussion, and more mystification, as to who
this Queen of Flowers could be--where she lived--and so forth. Nothing
was known of her except her name--Hermance. More than one adventurous
student--you may guess I am stating the number within bounds--traced
her steps for hour after hour, till night set in--in vain. Her flowers
disposed of, she was generally joined by an old man, respectably clad,
whose arm she took with a certain confidence, that sufficiently marked
him as a parent or protector; and the two always contrived sooner or
later, in some mysterious manner, to disappear.
After all stratagems have failed, it generally occurs to people to
ask a direct question. But this in the present case was impossible.
Hermance was never seen except in very public places--often in
crowds--and to exchange twenty consecutive words with her, was
considered a most fortunate feat. Notwithstanding, too, her strange,
wild way of gaining her livelihood, there was a certain dignity in her
manner which sufficed to cool the too curious.
As for the directors of the theatres, they exhibited a most appropriate
amount of madness on her account; and I believe that at several of the
theatres, Hermance might have commanded her own terms. But only one of
these miserable men succeeded in making a tangible proposal, and he
was treated with most glorious contempt. There was, indeed, something
doubly dramatic in the _Bouquetière's_ disdain of the drama. She who
_lived_ a romance could never descend to act one. She would rather be
Rosalind than Rachel. She refused the part of Cerito, and chose to be
an Alma on her own account.
It may be supposed that where there was so much mystery, imagination
would not be idle. To have believed all the conflicting stories
about Hermance, would be to come to the conclusion that she was
the stolen child of noble parents, brought up by an _ouvrier_; but
that somehow her father was a tailor of dissolute habits, who lived
a contented life of continual drunkenness, on the profits of his
daughter's industry;--that her mother was a deceased duchess--but,
on the other hand, as alive, and carried on the flourishing business
of a _blanchisseuse_. As for the private life of the young lady
herself, it was reflected in such a magic mirror of such contradictory
impossibilities, in the delicate discussion held upon the subject, that
one had no choice but disbelieve every thing.
One day a new impulse was given to this gossip by the appearance of
the _Bouquetière_ in a startling hat of some expensive straw, and of a
make bordering on the ostentatious. It could not be doubted that the
profits of her light labors were sufficient to enable her to multiply
such finery to almost any extent, had she chosen; but in Paris the
adoption of a bonnet or a hat, in contradistinction to the little cap
of the _grisette_, is considered an assumption of a superior grade,
and unless warranted by the "position" of the wearer, is resented
as an impertinence. In Paris, indeed, there are only two classes of
women--those with bonnets and those without; and these stand in the
same relation to one another, as the two great classes into which the
world may be divided--the powers that be, and the powers that want to
be. Under these circumstances, it may be supposed that the surmises
were many and marvellous. The little _Bouquetière_ was becoming
proud--becoming a lady;--but how? why? and above all--where? Curiosity
was never more rampant, and scandal never more inventive.
For my part, I saw nothing in any of these appearances worthy, in
themselves, of a second thought; nothing could have destroyed the
strong and strange interest which I had taken in the girl; and it
would have required something more potent than a straw hat--however
coquettish in crown, and audacious in brim--to have shaken my belief in
her truth and goodness. Her presence, for the accustomed few minutes,
in the afternoon or evening, became to me--I will not say a necessity,
but certainly a habit; and a habit is sufficiently despotic when
"A fair face and a tender voice have made me"--
I will not say "mad and blind," as the remainder of the line would
insinuate--but most deliciously in my senses, and most luxuriously wide
awake! But to come to the catastrophe--
"One morn we missed _her_ in the accustomed spot"--
Not only, indeed, from "accustomed" and probable spots, but from
unaccustomed, improbable, and even impossible spots--all of which
were duly searched--was she missed. In short, she was not to be found
at all. All was amazement on the Boulevards. Hardened old _flaneurs_
turned pale under their rouge, and some of the younger ones went about
with drooping moustaches, which, for want of the _cire_, had fallen
into the "yellow leaf."
A few days sufficed, however, for the cure of these sentimentalists.
A clever little monkey at the Hippodrome, and a gentleman who stood
on his head while he ate his dinner, became the immediate objects of
interest, and Hermance seemed to be forgotten. I was one of the few who
retained any hope of finding her, and my wanderings for that purpose,
without any guide, clue, information, or indication, seem to me now
something absurd. In the course of my walks, I met an old man, who
was pointed out to me as her father--met him frequently, alone. The
expression of his face was quite sufficient to assure me that he was on
the same mission--and with about as much chance of success as myself.
Once I tried to speak to him; but he turned aside, and avoided me with
a manner that there could be no mistaking. This surprised me, for I had
no reason to suppose that he had ever seen my face before.
A paragraph in one of the newspapers at last threw some light on the
matter. The _Bouquetière_ had never been so friendless or unprotected
as people had supposed. In all her wanderings she was accompanied, or
rather followed, by her father; whenever she stopped, then he stopped
also; and never was he distant more than a dozen yards. I wonder that
he was not recognised by hundreds, but I conclude he made some change
in his attire or appearance, from time to time. One morning this
strange pair were proceeding on their ramble as usual, when passing
through a rather secluded street, the _Bouquetière_ made a sudden bound
from the pavement, sprung into a post-chaise, the door of which stood
open, and was immediately whirled away, as fast as four horses could
tear--leaving the old man alone with his despair, and the basket of
flowers.
Three months have passed away since the disappearance of the
_Bouquetière_; but only a few days since I found myself one evening
very dull at one of those "brilliant receptions," for which Paris is so
famous. I was making for the door, with a view to an early departure,
when my hostess detained me, for the purpose of presenting to me a
lady who was monopolizing all the admiration of the evening--she was
the newly-married bride of a young German Baron of great wealth,
and noted for a certain wild kind of genius, and utter scorn of
conventionalities. The next instant I found myself introduced to a pair
of eyes that could never be mistaken. I dropped into a vacant chair by
their side, and entered into conversation. The Baronne observed that
she had met me before, but could not remember where, and in the same
breath asked me if I was a lover of flowers.
I muttered something about loving beauty in any shape, and admired a
bouquet which she held in her hand.
The Baronne selected a flower, and asked me if it was not a peculiarly
fine specimen. I assented; and the flower, not being redemanded, I did
not return it. The conversation changed to other subjects, and shortly
afterwards the Baronne took her leave with her husband. They left Paris
next day for the Baron's family estate, and I have never seen them
since.
I learned subsequently that some strange stories had obtained
circulation respecting the previous life of the Baronne. Whatever they
were, it is very certain that this or some other reason has made the
profession of _Bouquetière_ most inconveniently popular in Paris. Young
ladies of all ages that can, with any degree of courtesy, be included
in that category, and of all degrees of beauty short of the hunch-back,
may be seen in all directions intruding their flowers with fatal
pertinacity upon inoffensive loungers, and making war upon button-holes
that never did them any harm. The youngest of young girls, I find, are
being trained to the calling, who are all destined, I suppose, to marry
distinguished foreigners from some distant and facetious country.
I should have mentioned before, that a friend calling upon me the
morning after my meeting with the Baronne, saw the flower which she had
placed in my hand standing in a glass of water on the table. An idea
struck me: "Do you know anything of the language of flowers?" I asked.
"Something," was the reply.
"What, then, is the meaning of this?"
"SECRECY."
From the Antheneum
THE THREE ERAS OF OTTOMAN HISTORY[6]
So much has been said and written of late respecting the decline and
decrepitude of the Ottoman Empire, that most persons believe that
there is nothing to prevent a Russian army from marching up to the
gates of Constantinople, and taking possession of the city, except
the resistance which might be offered by the other powers of Europe
to such an extension of the Russian dominions. Many of our readers
will therefore be surprised to learn that the army of the Sultan is at
present in a more efficient state than it has been for the last two
centuries; and that in the event of a war breaking out between Russia
and Turkey, the latter would probably be able to resist, single-handed,
the attacks of her formidable and ambitions neighbor. This is the
view which Mr. Skene endeavors to establish in the pamphlet before
us; and from information which we have ourselves received from other
quarters, we entirely agree with the conclusion to which Mr. Skene
has come,--that "the power of conquest, possessed by the only state
with which there appears the slightest possibility of a rupture taking
place, is in general as notoriously exaggerated as that of defence on
the part of Turkey is commonly undervalued." To enable the reader to
obtain an accurate idea of the present condition of the Ottoman army,
Mr. Skene gives a brief but able review of its history. He divides
his narrative into three eras: the first contains an account of the
military history of Turkey till the destruction of the Janissaries in
1825; the second comprises the period of transition, which followed the
destruction of the Janissaries; and the third comprehends the formation
of the Nizam, or the regular army of the present day. The annals of the
first of these eras are, in fact, the history of the Turkish conquests,
and of the decline of the empire.
[6] _The Three Eras of Ottoman History; a Political Essay on the late
Reforms of Turkey, considered principally as affecting her Position in
the event of a War taking place._ By J. H. SKENE, Esq. Chapman & Hall.
"Through the Janissaries Turkey rose--by them she was about to fall;
and without the Nizam, or regular army of Sultan Abdul Medjid, which
exists as a consequence of the destruction of the Janissaries, she
would never have had any chance of rising again, or even of saving her
political independence."
The Janissaries were organized by Sultan Orkhan in the fourteenth
century. They bore the title of _Yenitsheri_, or New Troops, in
contradistinction to the previous armies, which had been raised
by levies of irregular troops, as occasion required. They were a
well-disciplined body of troops, and they constituted the principal
force of the empire. It was to their valor and efficiency that the
Turkish empire owed its existence; and they were almost uniformly
successful in all the great battles which they fought till their defeat
by Montecuculi at St. Gothard, in 1664. This defeat was the forerunner
of a long series of disasters.
"Their career of conquest was over, and it was a career altogether
without a parallel in history. Generation after generation had advanced
without ever retrograding a single step. A vast empire had arisen out
of the hereditary valor and systematic discipline of a portion of the
army. It was not the creation of the military genius of an individual
like that of Alexander the Great or Napoleon Buonaparte, but it was
the result of a successful organization, assisted by the inherent
bravery of the Turkish race, which enabled their sultans to follow up
from father to son the ambitious scheme of the founder of the dynasty.
But, at the close of that era of conquest, the organization of the
Janissaries had become corrupt, the prestige of almost invariable good
fortune had disappeared, and their internal discipline was declining
fast, while their indomitable valor had degenerated into overweening
pride, seditious turbulence towards the government, and cruel tyranny
over the population."
Towards the end of last century the insubordination and tyranny of the
Janissaries had reached their highest point. The dispersion of this
formidable body had become absolutely necessary for the salvation of
the Ottoman empire; and it was at length effected by Sultan Mahmoud II..
"The value of the Janissaries as a regular army had been sufficiently
tested, and the time had now arrived when Sultan Mahmoud II. judged it
expedient to cut the Gordian knot. He issued a proclamation, obliging
all his troops to submit anew to the discipline which they had cast off
for more than a century and a half. The Janissaries refused obedience.
The Sultan unfolded the Sacred Standard of the Empire, and placing
himself, with his only son and heir, beside it, he appealed to the
patriotism of those around him. He drew his dagger, and said, in a loud
voice,
"'Do my subjects wish to save the Empire from the humiliation of
yielding to a band of seditious miscreants, or do they prefer that I
should put an end to that Empire by here stabbing my son and myself
in order to rescue it from the disgrace of being trampled upon by
traitors?'
"He then ordered that the standard should be planted on the Atmeidan,
or Hippodrome; crowds of people, from the highest to the lowest class
of society, headed by the _Ullema_, or magistrates, and the _Softa_,
or students, assembled round the standard, and, having heard what the
Sultan had said from those whom he had addressed, the mob, excited by
enthusiasm, hurried away to carry the alarm through the town. All who
possessed or could procure arms prepared them, and rushed to attack
the barracks of the Janissaries. The corps of artillery, having torn
off the badges, which were also worn by those abhorred regiments, that
all appearance of fellowship with them might at once be destroyed,
commenced the onslaught. Three hours, with 4000 artillerymen and
students, incited by that resolute will, which had foreseen and
provided for every possible casualty during eighteen years of apparent
submission to the tyranny of a _caste_, sufficed to annihilate the
military ascendancy which had once made the sovereigns of Europe
tremble abroad, as it had the sultans at home. The attack, however,
was directed against only one side of the square, and the other three,
as well as the neighboring gate of the town, were purposely left open,
with the view that those of the Janissaries who did not wish to resist
the Sultan's order might escape unharmed; and quarter was given to all
who chose to submit. Similar orders having been simultaneously sent to
every part of the empire where Janissaries were stationed, the same
conditions were offered to 150,000 individuals affiliated to the corps.
Of these only 3600 refused them, and they were the most incorrigible
of the chiefs. Having been made prisoners they were tried by a regular
court of justice, and it was only necessary to prove their identity
in order to condemn them, as the Sultan had carefully compiled the
proofs of their respective crimes during many years. Eighteen hundred
of them were executed, of whom 600 at Constantinople, 1200 being put
to death in the provinces; and the remainder were exiled. Although it
must have been an appalling sight to behold those 600 corpses lying on
the Atmeidan, one cannot help admiring the patriotism elicited on that
occasion; when the Janissaries perceived it, they were stupified by the
unexpected excitement of the people; and many fled, fully convinced
of the impossibility of resisting those over whom they had hitherto
domineered with impunity."
The Sultan now set himself to replace the Janissaries by other regular
troops; but Russian ambition did not give him time to organize a new
army, and he was obliged to fight with his young and undisciplined
recruits against the "veteran warrior-slaves of the Czar." The Ottoman
army was accordingly defeated; and the war was brought to a close by
the disastrous treaty of Adrianople. His successor, the present sultan,
Abdul Medjid, has been more fortunate. He has enjoyed several years of
peace, which have enabled him to form a powerful and well-disciplined
army, of which Mr. Skene gives us a valuable and interesting account.
It was established at the beginning of the year 1842:
"It is divided into six separate armies, called _Ordu_ in Turkish. Each
of these consists of two services, the Active, or _Nizamia_, and the
Reserve, or _Rédiff_. The former contains two corps, under the command
of their respective lieutenant-generals (_Férik_); and the latter, also
two corps, commanded in time of peace by a brigadier (_Liva_); the
whole _Ordu_ being under the orders of a field-marshal (_Mushir_). The
general staff of each army is composed of a commander-in-chief, two
lieutenant-generals, three brigadiers of infantry, one of whom commands
the reserve, two brigadiers of cavalry, and one brigadier of artillery.
In each corps there are three regiments of infantry, two of cavalry,
and one of artillery, with thirty-three guns. The total strength of
these twelve regiments of the active force is 30,000 men, but it is
diminished in time of peace by furlough to an effective strength of
about 25,000 men in three of the six armies, and of 15,000 in the other
three, in consequence of the recruiting system being as yet incomplete
in its application all over the Turkish Empire. The whole establishment
of this branch amounts, therefore, to 180,000 men, belonging to the
active service, but its effective strength is at present 123,000. The
reserve of four of the six armies consists in eleven regiments--six
of infantry, four of cavalry, and one of artillery; composing a force
of 212,000 effective soldiers, while the other two armies have not
yet their reserve of soldiers who have served five years. In time of
war, however, the reserve would form two corps of 25,000 men in each
army; giving a total of 300,000 when this establishment shall have
been completed. The two services, therefore, as they now stand, form
an effective force of 335,000 men; and when their full strength shall
have been filled up it will amount to 480,000. Besides these six armies
there are four detached corps; one in the Island of Crete, consisting
of three regiments of infantry and one of cavalry, in all 11,000 men;
another in the pashalik of Tripoli in Africa, composed of one regiment
of infantry and one of cavalry, about 5,000 strong; a third at Tunis of
the same strength; and a fourth, which is the central artillery corps,
formed of a brigade of sappers and miners with engineer officers,
the veteran artillery brigade, and the permanent artillery garrisons
of the fortresses on the Hellespont, the Bosphorus, the Danube, in
Serbia, on the Adriatic, the coast of Asia Minor, in the islands of the
Archipelago, and on the southern shores of the Black Sea; in all 9,000
men. These four corps raise the effective strength of the standing
army to 365,000 men. Besides this addition, another augmentation of
32,000 men will be realized by the submission of Bosnia and Northern
Albania to the new system; and a further increase of 40,000 men, whom
Serbia has engaged to furnish, may be calculated, as well as 18,000
men serving in Egypt, who are destined to reinforce the reserve of the
fifth army. The marines, sailors, and workmen, enrolled in brigades,
amount to 34,000 men; and the police force, picketed all over the
Empire, is nearly 30,000 strong. The grand total of armed men at the
disposal of Turkey, in the event of her existing resources being called
into play, may, therefore, be quoted at no less than 664,000 men,
without having recourse to occasional levies, which are more easily and
efficiently realized in Turkey than in any other country."
The service is popular; the troops are well paid, and their material
comforts are well provided for:
"The rations consist of meat, bread, rice, and vegetables in abundance
every day, besides butter or oil to cook them with.... The military
hospitals might serve as a pattern of cleanliness to the first armies
of the world, and the medical officers are now perfectly efficient,
some of them having studied at European universities, others
having become proficients in their art at the medical college of
Constantinople, and a few being foreigners. The health of the troops
is consequently excellent; so much so, that on one occasion when 50
men out of 3450 were in hospital, it appeared so alarming to the staff
of the garrison that a general consultation was held to decide on what
steps should be taken to oppose the progress of the sickness. One man
in every seventy is no unusual occurrence in the hospitals of the
British army; and as for the Russians, they thought little of 12,000
who died at Bucharest in 1829, 10,000 at Varna, and 6000 at Adrianople.
The Turkish clothing is excellent; it is strong and warm."
Respecting their probable efficiency in the field, Mr. Skene remarks:
"In their evolutions the Turkish soldiers are rapid, especially the
cavalry and artillery, whose horses are excellent; but there may
perhaps be some room for improvement in their steadiness. It has been
remarked of late at Bucharest, where the Turkish and Russian armies
of occupations have their head-quarters, and are consequently often
reviewed, that the latter were infinitely slower than the former,
and that their light infantry drill was far inferior to that of the
Turks, but when moving in line or open column, the Russians, stiff
as planks and dreading the lash, kept their distances and dressing
somewhat better than the Turks. It may be added in illustration of the
respective solicitude of the two armies for the health of the men,
that, after one of these field days, three hundred Russians went to the
hospital in consequence of exposure to the sun, and one hundred and
sixty of them died, while there has not been a single instance of the
kind amongst the Turkish troops.
"With such an army as this, formed by a nation whose inherent bravery
has never been impugned even by its most prejudiced detractors, it will
readily be allowed that, were the campaign of 1829 against the Russians
to be fought over again now, the result would be very different,
considering how many years the regular troops of the Sultan have been
in training, and also how undeniably the Russian army has been falling
off, for it was not then to be compared with what it had been in 1815,
and it is not now equal to what it was in 1829."
The reserve of the army is organized in the following manner:
"The reserve of the Turkish army is organized in a peculiar manner.
It is composed of soldiers who have already served five years in the
active force, and who are allowed to remain in their native provinces
on furlough, and without pay, for seven years more, during which they
assemble for one month of each year at the local head-quarters of their
regiment, for the purpose of being drilled; and they then receive their
pay, as well as when they are called into active service in time of
war. This measure, which was dictated by a spirit of economy, has been
eminently successful, inasmuch as a considerable additional force is
thus placed at the Sultan's command, without its being a continual
burden to the State; and the efficiency of that force has been fully
demonstrated of late, when an army of 62,000 men was assembled by
Turkey in the space of six weeks, on the occasion of the interruption
of her amicable relations with Russia and Austria on account of the
Hungarian refugees. In another month, 200,000 men of the _Rédiff_
might have been collected at Constantinople had they been required;
and it furnished matter for astonishment to the many foreigners in
that capital to behold a thoroughly drilled and disciplined army
thus extemporized in a camp, to which a number of mere peasants in
appearance had been seen flocking from their villages.
"This system is rendered still more complete by the practice of
recruiting regiments from the same districts, in order that, when
their five years of active service shall have elapsed, the soldiers
may remain together: and the confusion occasioned by embodying
pensioners in other countries is avoided in Turkey, where the officers,
non-commissioned officers, staff, and rank and file of a regiment
continue united, whether on active service or as forming a part of the
reserve. They are engaged in agricultural pursuits, or in trade, during
their seven years of furlough, being periodically mustered for military
exercise, and always ready to move in a body on any point where
reinforcements may be necessary, while a salutary feeling of _esprit de
corps_ is maintained by making such regiment a separate and distinct
body of men, raised in the same locality, and most of its members being
personally known to each other."
Mr. Skene does not give us any information respecting the skill and
ability of the superior officers. On this point we must confess we are
not without apprehensions; for however excellent and efficient the
troops of the line may be, their valor and discipline will be thrown
away, if the higher officers--which we suspect to be the case--are
inferior to those in the Russian service.
The threats of Austria give all this subject importance. Honest
Christendom for the first time cries, God for the Turk!
From "The Adventures of a Soldier in Mexico," in the
United Service Magazine.
THE CAPTAIN AND THE NEGRO.
A rather ludicrous circumstance, which occurred while we lay at
Newport, helped to enliven the usual monotony of a ship's deck while in
harbor. A comical sort of a fellow, of the name of Morris, belonging to
one of the companies on board, who used to sing Nigger songs, and who,
being a very good mimic, could act the Nigger admirably, resolved to
turn his talents to account by assuming the character while in harbor,
and passing himself off among his comrades, except a few who were in
his confidence, as a black cook belonging to the ship--his twofold
motive for thus "working the dodge," as he styled it, being partly the
fun he expected from the mystification of the men and officers, and
partly that he might be allowed to bring whisky into the ship, there
being no hindrance to the ship's crew bringing goods on board, as our
sentries could not interfere with them. Borrowing, therefore, an old
pair of canvas trousers, a Guernsey shirt, and tarpaulin hat from a
sailor, and thoroughly engraining his face and hands with the sooty
composition requisite to give him the true Ethiopian complexion, he
became quite invulnerable to detection by his coat of darkness. In
this disguise, he rolled about the deck during the whole forenoon in a
partial state of intoxication, and came and went between the vessel
and shore, carrying baskets and parcels of suspicious import with the
most perfect impunity. Towards evening, he began to sing snatches of
Nigger songs, varying the exhibition with a "flare-up" jawing match
with some of the soldiers, in the sort of gibberish and broken English
so peculiar to the woolly-headed sons of Ham. This comedy afforded
considerable amusement, especially to those of his comrades in the
secret of his disguise. As he was dexterous in the tongue fence of
those encounters of rude wit, and knowing the chinks in the armor of
his opponents, he was sometimes able, by a seemingly careless though
cunning thrust, to administer a sickener to their vanity, which was
the more galling as seeming to come from a dirty and half-drunken
Nigger. "Ah, soger," he would say to some poor fellow whom he saw
casting a longing eye towards the busy thoroughfares of the city;
"captain not let you go ashore, eh? Too bad, eh? much sooner be black
ship's cook than soger." "What's that you say, you Nigger?" would most
probably be the reply of the soldier, not being in the best temper, and
rather indignant at the idea of being an object of commiseration to a
Nigger. "Who you call Nigger, eh? Nigger yourself, sar, more Nigger,
a good sight, than ship's cook, sar; ship's cook go shore when he
please, and get drunk like gentleman, sar; you a white soger Nigger,
me black ship's cook Nigger--dat all de difference." Then, as if in
soliloquy, in a deprecatory tone, "Eh! by Jorze, boff poor Niggers;
soger mos' as 'specable as colored Nigger when he keep heself sober
and behave 'screetly, like color gemman." Stung and irritated by the
mock sympathy of the Nigger, the soldier would now be for taking a
summary revenge out of his ignoble carcase, when some of the darkey's
friends would interpose, declaring that he was a good fellow, and they
would not see him ill-used. In the mean time, Morris was supposed
by the orderly-sergeant of his company to be absent in town, and as
such reported to the captain. Thus far, all had gone on swimmingly;
but there was a bit of a rather unpleasant surprise preparing for
him as the _denouement_ to this farce, which he had acted with so
much success, which had probably not entered into his conception of
the character, but mightily increased the dramatic effect of the
representation as a whole.
The captain of his company, who was a bit of a humorist, either having
detected the masquerader himself, or having been informed by some
busy person of the strange metamorphosis which one of his men had
undergone, it occurred to him that he had an opportunity of giving him
a taste of Nigger discipline, that might make him feel more vividly the
character he had been representing with so much applause. Sauntering,
accordingly, along the deck, with his hands behind him, until he
arrived opposite the circle where Morris was exhibiting his antics,
he deliberately stepped forward and seized him by the collar, and,
pulling out a raw cowhide from behind his back, he began to vigorously
belabor poor darkey's shoulders. "O Lor, massa! O Golly! What you trike
poor debil for? What hell dis?" shouted Morris, who had no idea that
he was discovered, and was willing to submit to a moderate degree of
chastisement rather than drop his disguise at that particular juncture.
"You infernal grinning scoundrel," cries the captain, still vigorously
applying the cowhide, "I have been watching you quarrelling with and
aggravating my men all this afternoon; what do you mean, you black
rascal, eh? Curse your ugly black countenance, I'll beat you to a
jelly, you scoundrel." As he still continued his discipline with the
cowhide, showing no symptoms of speedily leaving off, Morris, who was
smarting with pain, at last began to think more of preserving his skin
than his incognito, and called out lustily, "Captain! I say--stop! I
am no Nigger--I am a soldier!" At this there was a general burst of
laughter from the soldiers, who crowded round, and seemed to enjoy
the scene amazingly; those who did not know that Morris was actually
a soldier laughing still more obstreperously at the seeming absurdity
of the Nigger's assertion. The captain, though evidently tickled,
seemed in no hurry to let him go. "Do you hear the impudence of the
black rascal? he says he is a soldier!" said the captain, addressing
the men who were standing round. "There, does he look like a soldier!"
he continued, as he turned him round for inspection. "Go along, you
black rascal, and don't let me catch you among my men again, or I will
certainly serve you out with a few more of the same sort." So saying,
and administering a few parting salutations of the cowhide as he
released him, the captain walked off, chuckling to himself at the joke,
which I saw him relating afterwards to some of his brother officers,
to their infinite mirth, if one might judge from the peals of laughter
which his story elicited. In the mean time, Morris was fain to get
rid of his Nigger character as quickly as possible: and having, with
the aid of warm water and soap, effected this, he made his appearance
on deck, and reported himself as having been asleep in the hold when
the roll was called. This the sergeant reported to the captain, who,
satisfied, it is probable, with the punishment he had administered with
the cowhide, affected to believe his statement, and sent him word by
the sergeant to take better care in future.
* * * * *
When Lord Holland was on his death-bed, his friend, George Selwyn,
calling to inquire how his lordship was, left his card. This was taken
to Lord Holland, who said, "If Mr. Selwyn calls again, show him into my
room. If I am alive I shall be glad to see him: if I am dead, I am sure
he will be delighted to see me."
From the New Monthly Magazine.
THE VEILED PICTURE. A TRAVELLER'S STORY.
I.
The dawn of a fine October morning, in 1817, was just breaking when
the Paris diligence of Messrs. Lafitte and Co. took the opportunity of
breaking also. That of the former, however, was as glorious as that
of the latter was disastrous. I had been rambling during the summer
months through that most interesting country; the volcanic district of
Auvergne had laved both my inward and my outward man in most of the
celebrated waters which abound in that neighborhood, and was on my
return to Paris, where I expected to find the friends with whom I had
travelled from England, and hoped to travel back again. It was then
with a light heart that I had, on the preceding evening, jumped into
the _coupée_ of the luckless vehicle at the little town of Gannât,
congratulating myself, firstly, on my good luck in finding a vacant
place at all, and secondly, on that place being in the _coupée_, and
lastly, and most especially, on there being only one other passenger
therein, whereby, as all travellers by diligence are aware, I was
spared the uncomfortable task of performing bodkin all the way to
Paris, and could take mine ease in mine own corner. When all prudential
arrangements for the night, such as air cushion disposed at back, and
cloak drawn over knees, were duly made, I began to take a survey of my
fellow-traveller, who had greeted me on my entrance with much civility,
but the light did not enable me to do more than perceive that he was a
venerable-looking old gentleman, whose white locks escaped from under
his travelling cap, and descended on his shoulders in great profusion.
His manners, however, were so courteous and dignified, that I, at once,
recognized in him a specimen of that now well-nigh obsolete race the
_ancienne noblesse_. After sundry inquiries and observations on the
country through which we were travelling, and divers speculations as to
the period at which our journey might possibly end, my fellow-traveller
turned to the topic of the battle of Waterloo, then a recent event.
"Now," thought I, "for a quarrel." But no; though he felt for the
tarnished glory of the French arms, he felt yet more for the old
family, and bore me no ill-will for being one of that nation by whose
efforts they had been restored, and the Corsican usurper expelled.
From these he reverted to the "good old days" of Louis XV., to whose
body of Gardes du Corps he had formerly, it seemed, had the honor of
belonging, he related many anecdotes of that period, and was especially
prosy about the ceremonies observed at the court of that dissolute and
_bien-aimé_ monarch. It was during a long story of this sort that I
fell into a sound sleep, from which I was awakened by a loud crash, a
pretty considerable thump on the head, and a heavy weight pressing on
my chest, for all which phenomena, though startling at first, I was
quickly able satisfactorily to account. The crash was caused by the
ponderous diligence coming into sudden and violent collision with the
ground; the thump by the same sort of rude contact between my head and
the roof thereof; whilst the weight which I felt so oppressive was
the body of my fellow-traveller, lying upon me in a state of complete
insensibility, and bleeding profusely. Freeing myself as gently as I
could from the apparently lifeless mass, I managed to get the window
down, and creep through the somewhat-narrow aperture, when the cause
and full extent of the accident was intelligible enough. The iron arm
of the axle of the near hind wheel had broken off short, and such
was the weight of luggage and packages of all kinds and descriptions
stowed away on the roof, that, going, as I understand we were, at, for
a French diligence in those days, a rapid pace, the shock had been
sufficient to completely capsize us. Sudden and severe, however, as
the shock had been, the lives and limbs of the passengers had escaped
without loss or material damage; those in the interior being too
closely packed for any very violent collision with each other, and the
three individuals in the cabriolet, of whom the _conducteur_ was one,
being pitched clean, I do not mean any reference to their persons, but
to their mode of projection, into a ploughed field by the roadside,
where they lay sprawling, and _sacréing_ and _mondieuing_, in the most
piteous and guttural tones imaginable, though none appeared to have
sufficient excuse for the unearthly noises he made from any actual hurt
he had sustained. I was, however, too anxious to afford help to my
companion in the _coupée_, to ascertain very minutely their condition,
even had I been able to obtain an answer to my inquiries, where all
insisted on talking at once and at the top of their voices, and in
a tone and with a vehemence which, in any other country, would have
seemed a prelude to nothing short of a battle royal. Seeing, however,
a peasant, _en blouse_, standing hard by, leaning on his spade, and
looking quietly on, I concluded he was not one of the passengers,
and might consequently be of some use. Accordingly I hailed him, and
after some irresolute gestures, he came up to me, when I explained,
rather by dragging him to the door of the carriage than by any verbal
communications, which would probably have failed, for what purpose I
wanted his assistance. Having opened the door of the carriage, I looked
in. There lay my unfortunate companion, "his silver skin laced with his
golden blood," still insensible and somewhat cramped, it is true, but
not in so uncomfortable a position as might, under the circumstances,
have been expected, seeing that I had propped him up as well as I
could, before I made my own exit, with my air cushion, and that of the
seat he had occupied. Being a tall and heavy man, to get him righted
and out was a work of no small difficulty; however, our united efforts
were at last successful, and the poor sufferer was laid on the turf by
the roadside, on a couch formed of cushions, great-coats, &c., &c.
My assistant, who, I must say, now exhibited all the alacrity I could
wish, and more handiness than I had expected from him, ran for water,
whilst I proceeded to examine my unlucky friend's wounds. He exhibited
an ugly gash on the head, from which had flowed the stream of blood
which had so disfigured his venerable locks. His left shoulder, too,
I found was dislocated. By the plentiful application of cold water to
his head and temples, and of some hartshorn, which I happened to have
about me, to his nostrils, I at length succeeded in restoring him to
consciousness, of which the first symptoms he gave was to glare upon me
with an expression of terror and alarm, and exclaiming, in accents of
deep despair, "Hah! blood!--more blood!" He uttered a piercing shriek,
and again relapsed into syncope. Thus assured, however, that he still
lived, the present moment seemed so favorable for the reduction of the
dislocated limb, that I set to work forthwith, and, with the assistance
of my friendly _paysan_, quickly divested him of his coat, and having
placed him in a proper position, instantly slipped the joint into
the socket, and bound it with my neckcloth. The snap recalled him to
sense, and by the help of a little brandy from my travelling flask,
he was completely restored. Still he surveyed me with a terrified
look, for which I could not well account, until I discovered that my
face and dress were stained with the blood which had flowed from his
wound whilst he lay upon me in the carriage. I hastened to remove what
I conceived to be the cause of his anxious looks, by assuring him I
had received no injury whatever except a slight contusion not worth
mentioning, and that the blood, which I washed off in his presence,
was his own. The next consideration was--what was to be done? To stay
where we were was out of the question; no sort of public conveyance
would pass that way _en route_ to Paris until the second morning at
the same hour. My companion's wound required dressing, and I wanted
my breakfast, for the sharp air of the morning had so quickened my
appetite, that the thoughts of my disaster were fast fading away
before the vision of _café au lait_ and a _biftek_. The realization of
this pleasing prospect became the more probable when I learnt that we
were not more than a short league from the town of Moulins, whither I
instantly dispatched my trusty _paysan_, whose faculties and movements
were much quickened by the promise of a five-franc piece when he
returned with some sort of vehicle to convey us into the town. During
his absence, which lasted two mortal hours, I had abundant time to
consider and contemplate the person and demeanor of the individuals
whom chance had thus thrown in my way, and, as it were, upon my
charity. The former still exhibited sufficient traces of manly beauty
to show that, in his youth, he had been strikingly handsome, whilst the
latter spoke the accomplished and high-bred gentleman in the truest and
least hackneyed acceptation of the word. Being now perfectly himself
again, he listened with much interest to such account of our accident
as I was able to give, and, ascertaining from his bandaged head and
shoulder the nature and extent of my services to him, his gratitude was
expressed in the warmest terms.
"I am the last of an ancient house," said he, "and but for you should
have died on the road like a dog. I am the Marquis de Marigny, pray
tell me to whom I am under so much obligation."
"Why, sir," said I, "my name is D----, by profession a physician, and,
at a pinch, a tolerable surgeon, and I never so congratulated myself
on my slender knowledge of this branch of the healing art as on the
present occasion."
Further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the _paysan_
with a sort of rickety cabriolet, drawn by so small a horse, decorated
with so large a collar, and covered with such a profusion of trappings,
that, until he drew up beside us, and I could clearly distinguish the
animal's four legs, I was not quite sure that the vehicle did not
progress by some locomotive power of its own.
Having roused the _conducteur_, whom we found fast asleep amidst a
pile of disorganized packages, we selected our respective baggage,
and, having secured it as well as we could on and about the cabriolet,
I took an affectionate leave of the good _paysan_, and, mounting by
the side of my venerable companion, handled the ribbons and started.
Our diminutive steed however required no great skill in coachmanship,
nor any persuasion to get home again as quickly as the weight behind
him would permit, so that we soon arrived at the town where, our
arrival being expected, we found mine host of the Hôtel d'Allier and
his _domestiques_ on the alert; and, by the time I had made a hasty
toilette, a good breakfast, to which I did ample justice, was on the
table. Our meal being ended, and my companion complaining of a good
deal of pain, I set forth in search of an apothecary's shop, where I
procured the necessary materials; and his hurts having been properly
dressed and bandaged, I advised him to go to bed and seek the repose he
so much needed till dinner time. In the mean time I amused myself by
writing some letters and in strolling through and about the environs
of this neat and lively town, which the pen of Sterne has rendered
classic ground. The evening was spent in my friend's bedroom, as he
was not well enough to join the party in the _salon_. Nevertheless he
was in good spirits, and very communicative; informed me that he was
the younger son of a noble family in Dauphiny, but that by the death
of his elder brother, many years since, he had succeeded to the title
and family estate, to which he had been paying a farewell visit when
I joined him at Gannât. These family histories and sundry interesting
anecdotes of the days of Louis XV. and XVI. so animated the old man,
that I, fearing the excitement in his present condition, thought it
prudent to plead fatigue and retire to rest.
Before we parted, however, for the night, he made me promise that I
would not desert him on the morrow if he should not be able to travel,
but that I would accompany him to Paris, and take up my quarters with
him during my stay in that capital. The next morning I found him,
though much better, yet still unfit for a continuous journey of any
length. With the assistance, therefore, of our host, we engaged a
_voiturier_ who, for a certain sum, agreed to take us to Paris by such
easy stages as we might direct and find agreeable. To describe the road
from Moulins to Paris would be to write a guide-book; suffice it to
say, that the weather was delightful, and my companion, who not only
bore the journey well, but seemed to derive both health and spirits
from this easy mode of travelling, was altogether the must amusing
companion I had ever happened to meet with; insomuch, that I almost
regretted, when we pulled up at the Barrière d'Italie on entering the
gay capital of France, that our journey was at an end. We arrived
about four o'clock P. M., and drove straight to the Place Beauveau,
where, without his order to the driver to stop, I should not have
failed to pitch upon his residence, so perfectly was it in keeping with
the appearance and character of its venerable owner. There prevailed
throughout the same air of antiquity; we were admitted by an ancient
porter and received by another elderly domestic, well-nigh as venerable
and aristocratic in his appearance as the master, who expressed in
affectionate, yet respectful terms, the lively satisfaction he felt on
again beholding his _cher marquis_, whose arrival he had been expecting
for some days, and manifested the most touching anxiety when he saw the
traces, and heard a brief account of the accident which had befallen
him. My friend, having most courteously and cordially welcomed me to
his house, consigned me to the care of Antoine, as this ancient serving
man was called, and by whom I was conducted to a suite of apartments,
_au seconde_ it is true, but most comfortably and tastefully furnished
in the Louis-Quatorze style of decoration. The walls were hung with
tapestry, relieved at intervals by splendid mirrors and tables of
rare marbles, whilst a bed, with green silk hangings, worthy of, and
apparently coeval with, Anne of Austria herself, promised me a night of
luxurious repose.
Having, with Antoine's assistance, unpacked and arranged my wardrobe,
I proceeded to dress for dinner, and my operations were scarcely
concluded ere he knocked at my door and announced that it was served.
I immediately followed him down stairs to a spacious and well-lighted
_salon_, where my friend awaited me. The repast to which we sat down
gave me a very exalted opinion of the _savoir faire_ of my friend's
_chef_. There was no _rosbif_, no _plomboudin_, no clumsy attempt
at imitation of the English _cuisine_, out of compliment to me; all
was French, and all was perfect--the soup pure and restoring--the
_côtellettes magnifiques_, and the _vol au vent superbe_. The Champagne
was _frappé_ to the minute, the Chambertin shed its _bouquet_, and the
Bordeaux of rare quality. Mine host ate and drank sparingly, but he did
the honors of his table in a manner so courteous, yet so jovial withal,
that our dinner was a protracted one, and it was late ere we retired
to coffee in his library, an oblong room of noble dimensions, and so
furnished that it would have been called comfortable even in England,
and elegant every where. The sides were covered with bookcases, whose
shelves contained the best German, French, and Italian authors, and
a much larger assortment of English works than is usually found in a
foreigner's collection. The ends were hung with some choice specimens
of the old masters, and one or two of the modern French school, whilst
here and there on marble tables, or pedestals, stood some exquisite
pieces of sculpture, which showed to the greatest advantage under
the soft light of three lamps of the purest alabaster, which hung
suspended from the ceiling; in short, the aspect of the whole apartment
proclaimed the owner to be a man of wealth, taste and literature.
Amongst the pictures, I observed that a large one, which hung alone
over the mantlepiece, was covered by a black crape veil or curtain.
This, of course, excited my curiosity; but as my friend, in describing
the others, never in any way alluded to it, I felt that inquiry was
impossible. In fact, he always contrived, or appeared to contrive, to
divert my attention when he perceived me looking in that direction.
"You see, sir," said he, "that I do in some measure cultivate English
literature. I have read the works of most of your best writers, and
flatter myself that I can almost taste and appreciate the beauties
of your great poet Shakspeare. I have seen, too, your Siddons give
vitality and form to the sublime conceptions of his genius. Her _Queen
Katharine_ was noble, her _Constance_ touching, and her _Lady Macbeth_
terrible. I shall _never_," continued he, in a low tone, and as if
talking to himself, "_never_ forget it; it recalled too _vividly_," and
here, methought, his eye glanced at the veiled picture, when, suddenly
starting up, he fetched from one of the shelves the volume containing
that play, and read aloud some passages with a power and effect that
quite surprised me. I was about to compliment him on the correctness
of his conception and the force of his elocution, but he waived his
hand, as if pained by the images produced on his mind by the scene
he had just read, hastily restored the book to its shelf, and turned
the conversation to some topic of the day, which, with other trivial
matter, occupied us till I proposed to retire. Shaking my hand warmly,
my friend jocularly expressed his hope that, "as I had less on my
conscience than Lady Macbeth, so I should rest better," and we parted
for the night.
Sleep, however, I could not, though my body was weary and my couch
soft. My mind had been strongly and strangely excited, as well by my
host's impassioned recital of Macbeth, as by the crape-clad picture,
and I could not help fancying that there was some mysterious connection
between it and the play. Thus I lay watching the flickering light
emitted by the embers of my wood-fire, which was now fast dying away on
the hearth, until the pendule on the chimney-piece announced in silver
tones that it was _three_ o'clock.
"I can endure this no longer," exclaimed I, "see that picture I must
and will. Every soul in the house is now buried in sleep; why should I
not steal down to the library and gratify my indomitable curiosity? If
it be a breach of hospitality, it is surely a venial one? What can the
old gentleman expect, if he will thus tantalize his guests?"
Whilst I thus reasoned with myself, I was busily employed in wrapping
my _robe de chambre_ about my person and in lighting my candle, and
in one minute, I stood before the object of my waking dreams, and in
another the light was raised to its proper level and the crape thrown
back; when, instead of some scene of blood, which my heated imagination
had conjured up, there stood revealed before my wondering eyes the
portrait of one of the loveliest women I ever beheld. The head, set
gracefully on exquisitely turned shoulders, exhibited a countenance in
which sweetness and intelligence were intimately blended. The features,
though not what is termed regular, were most harmonious, and gave me
a clearer idea of Lord Byron's "the mind, the music breathing from
her face," than I had ever had before. Her dark chestnut hair, parted
Madonnawise on her pale and thoughtful brow, fell in rich clusters down
an ivory neck, and finally rested on a bosom "firm as a maiden's, as
a matron's full." But it was the eyes that chiefly riveted my gaze.
Deep and clear as one of Ruysdael's lakes, they seemed to reflect in
their limpid mirror every surrounding object. At the first glance
their expression was that of softness; but on fixing mine upon them as
I did, in all the intensity of admiration, they seemed gradually to
assume so stern an aspect, as if reproving my impertinent curiosity,
that I fairly quailed beneath their glance. Whilst I thus stood, rooted
as it were to the spot, and lost in mingled feelings of admiration
and wonder, not unmixed with a certain sensation of awe, a hand laid
gently on my shoulder caused me to start round, and I beheld my friend
standing beside me. I was about to mutter some apology, but he stopped
me, saying, "It was my fault, I do not blame you. I ought to have known
that that veiled picture would excite your curiosity, and I ought not
to have brought you here unless I was prepared to gratify it. But
return to bed, and to-morrow you shall know my history and that of the
picture now before you. I never yet imparted it to mortal ear, but as
it will interest, and may possibly be useful to you in afterlife, you
shall have it, as some return for the services you have rendered me.
Good night." So saying he waived his hand in a friendly but somewhat
authoritative manner, and I betook myself to my apartment, a good deal
abashed and ashamed of my adventure.
It was late the next morning when Antoine, presenting himself at my
bedside, broke my slumbers, and with them the current of a dream of
which the picture and the occurrences of the past night formed the
basis. He informed me he had just dressed his master, and tendered me
the like service, which, however, I declined, and proceeded, unaided
and alone, to dress with all expedition. My friend received me in the
_salon_, where we had dined the preceding day, with his usual benignant
smile; but it was easy to perceive that his night had not been passed
in sleep. He looked languid and out of spirits, and our breakfast was
a somewhat silent one. When it was over, he sat awhile lost in deep
thought, but at length, as if by sudden effort, he arose and took me by
the arm, saying, "Allons, M.D., let us adjourn to the library, where I
will unburden my mind, and perform the promise of last night."
The picture was still uncovered, and we were no sooner seated than, as
if fearing his resolution might give way, he immediately began thus:
In the year 1770 I had, as I have already informed you, the honor
of belonging to that distinguished body the Gardes du Corps, and
though my duty required my almost constant presence at Versailles, I,
nevertheless, had a lodging in this house, which is now mine. I had at
that time but little prospect of ever possessing a house of my own, and
could not always pay my rent for the room I then occupied therein. My
family, of which I was the youngest, was rich, but I was poor, and have
often gone without a dinner, because I had not wherewithal to pay for
one. I fell into debt, which my brother promised, some day or other,
to pay; or I might, perhaps, get a rich wife, for we men of fashion,
whilst youth and good looks lasted, thought ourselves fairly entitled
to use the folly of wealthy old dowagers as an instrument placed in
our hands by Providence to enable us to revenge ourselves on Fortune
for her cruelty in making us younger sons. "Remember," my father used
to say to me, "that there is nothing on which our good or ill-fate in
life so much depends as on women; we are in their hands; they manage
us as they please; and it is the gentlest and the meekest who rule us
the most effectually." I, however, led a gay and thoughtless life, and
never troubled myself to inquire what influence, good or evil, women
might have on my future life. I had three occupations which took up all
my time--the ordinary routine of duty at Versailles; to pay assiduous
court to the Prince de Beauveau, who honored me with his patronage, and
for which reason I chose my lodgings as near as I could to his hotel;
and last, though not least, there was Mademoiselle Zephirine, _première
dansuese_ at the Theatre Audinet. You smile, Mr. D., but recollect that
I am now speaking of more than forty years ago. Ah! it was then no
slight affair to keep a mistress, I assure you; for, though not allowed
to hear one's name, she was to be openly acknowledged and as openly
fought for when there was occasion. I had, for instance, to call out an
officer in the Swiss Guards, for presuming to say that Zephirine had
failed in one of her favorite and most admired _pas_. The Princess de
Beauveau knew of the connection, and did not disapprove; so I practiced
all the fashionable dances of the day, that I might qualify myself to
appear as the partner of Zephirine at the public balls in Paris and at
the _fêtes champêtres_ at Versailles, where we danced on the verdant
carpet of the mossy turf. Zephirine had all the accomplishments and
tastes that take the fancy of a sprig of fashion of that period; she
fenced and rode beautifully; loved champagne suppers, and doted on all
the costly fineries of Madame Bertia's splendid show-room. In short,
I ruined myself with so little thought and so much pleasure that I
believed myself to be in love, and was quite sure that Mademoiselle
was as warmly attached to me; when, one evening, she came into my room
here,--this very room, my dear Mr. D., where we are now sitting, still
attired in her theatrical costume, and with the stage paint not yet
rubbed off her pretty face.
"Chevalier," said she, "take care of yourself, your creditors are about
to pounce upon you--yes, to arrest you. I learnt the fact not five
minutes ago from an attorney's clerk, who makes love to my maid, and I
came in to--"
"How can I sufficiently thank you, dearest," said I; "and so for me you
brave even a prison, and--"
"Why, not exactly," replied she. "You see, Chevalier, you have no
longer either cash or credit, and I should be a burden to you."
"Well?"
"Well, at first I had thoughts of sharing your fallen fortunes, but a
Monsieur Edmond, the son of an East India Director, has advised me to
abandon my intention and accompany him to England; 'twill be a saving
to you, and we are going to start immediately; our travelling-carriage
waits. Goodby, my dear chevalier,--_au revoir_!"
With that she made a _pirouette_, and in three bounds was out of the
room. I ran, I flew, but Zephirine was too nimble for me, and I reached
the street just in time to see her jump lightly into the carriage of
the rich Englishman, and drive off at a gallop. To follow them--to
overtake the ravisher and force him to resign his prey, was my first
impulse; but, alas! I had no money, nor the means of borrowing any,
and stood, moreover, in need of the kind intervention of the Prince de
Beauveau between me and my importunate creditors. There was nothing
for it, therefore, but to digest the affront as well as I could. When
my mind became somewhat calmer, and I had pretty well got over the
jeers of my acquaintance, I began to ask myself if I had really loved
Zephirine, and if there had not been more vanity than passion in all
the follies she had led me to commit? The response was, that I had
_not_ been in love with her, nor she with me. We both loved a jolly,
rackety life--that was all; she was too flighty for affection, and I
too dissipated for serious attachment. Besides, a man rarely allows
his whole mind and thoughts to be entirely engrossed by any woman; he
courts distraction in the variety of other occupations and tastes; all
pursuits, all channels of employment, are open to him; and if he be a
soldier, he is exposed to so many vicissitudes and dangers, and meets
with so many adventures, that all the passions are brought into play,
and each in its turn so blunts and weakens the influence of the other
that none makes any durable impression. He abandons without scruple, a
beloved mistress for a wealthy wife, and speaks of it openly without
shame or reserve, whilst a woman would blush at the bare idea of such
an act. Woman's love lives on self-denial, grows by sacrifices, and
expands under the pressure of misfortune. I do not say that such is the
love of all women, but it is of that chosen few with whose feelings it
is dangerous to trifle, and who are not to be cast off with impunity. I
have dwelt the more at length on my connection with Zephirine, because
her name will re-appear in the course of the history of my first _real_
love. I was, however (continued M. de Marigny), more cut up by my
misfortune than I cared to confess, and had thoughts of quitting my
lodgings in the Place Beauveau, and of having no other residence than
the barracks of the Gardes du Corps at Versailles, when one evening,
at about eleven o'clock, as I was returning home, pondering upon the
urgent importunities of my creditors, and my brother's slackness in
carrying into effect his promises and good intention towards me, I
heard piercing shrieks proceeding from the very place whither I was
going, and from the spot where it is crossed by a narrow street which
leads into the Champs Elysées, then, neither paved, nor, as now,
ornamented by good houses on each side. I need hardly add that this
street was as dark as pitch, whilst even the place itself was only
dimly lighted by the flickering gleam of the one poor lamp which hung
before the hotel of M. le Prince de Beauveau. I drew my sword, and ran
towards the spot whence the cries proceeded, but had scarcely gone
twenty yards before I stumbled over a lifeless body. I stretched out my
hands, and caught by the arm a fainting female, who at the same moment,
seemed to come to herself only to redouble her cries and lamentations.
"Help! help!" cried she, in a voice choked by tears.
"Here is help, madame," said I; "what is the matter--tell me?"
"Help! they have slain this unhappy gentleman by my side."
My lodging being close by I ran and shook the great gate by repeated
knocking, until I roused the porter and my own servant, cried murder,
and, as at that hour of the night many of the inmates were not yet gone
to bed, a light was soon procured, and all hastened to the scene of
the murder. There we found, stretched in a pool of blood, a young and
handsome female, her face whiter than the kerchief which encircled her
blood-stained neck, her ears torn, her hands wounded, and close beside
her the dead body of a man, somewhat older than herself, and which the
neighbors speedily recognized as that of M. de Fosseux, a gentleman
of some distinction at the bar, and who lived in the Place Beauveau,
right opposite to my house. A general cry of horror burst from us
all. The victim had been stabbed to the heart by a strong and steady
hand, and the dagger--the instrument with which the crime had been
perpetrated--had dropt from the wound, and was bathed in blood.
"There were two of them," cried the young lady, sobbing; "one seized my
hands, tore the ear-rings from my ears, and snatched my necklace from
my neck, whilst the other stabbed M. de Fosseux, who fell without a
groan. Ah! if they had but been content only to rob us!"
Then were the lamentations of the unhappy lady renewed, and she fell
into repeated swoons, from which she was recalled only to weep more and
more bitterly. We raised her up and carried her to her own house, or
rather to that of M. de Fosseux, whither we also carried him, and sent
for a surgeon; but his help was useless; M. de Fosseux had long ceased
to breathe. On receiving information of the occurrence, a lieutenant
of police came instantly, and very speedily and satisfactorily decided
on a very evident fact, namely, that the sole object of the assassins
had been plunder, for M. de Fosseux had been robbed of his watch,
his purse, a valuable ring, the mark of which was still visible on
one of his fingers, and a pair of diamond buckles. Having satisfied
himself on this point, the officer next proceeded to the apartment
of the young lady, whom he interrogated most strictly as to all the
details and circumstances attending the commission of the deed. She
replied to all his questions with much self-possession, and the most
exact precision--"stated her name to be Eugenie d'Ermay, by birth a
gentlewoman, and a native of Poitou; twenty-five years of age, and
an orphan, without any private fortune; and," added she, casting her
eyes on the ground, "I have lived for seven years with M. de Fosseux,
without the sanction of the marriage tie." He, her sole protector, and
the only friend to whom she could look on leaving the convent where she
had been educated, had also been her seducer; but he introduced her to
society and to the families of his friends, and that very evening they
had been supping with Madame la Comtesse de T----, and were returning
on foot, when, close to their own door, the above tragical event took
place. As to the deed itself, all had been effected with the utmost
rapidity. Two men whom they had for some time observed to be following
them, suddenly rushed upon them--one of the two had seized her and held
her fast, whilst he stripped her of her trinkets; the other laid hold
of M. de Fosseux, had struck him a too sure and fatal blow, and robbed
him with a dispatch and address which showed an experienced hand; all
this had been but the work of an instant, and the two assassins had
fled towards the Champs Elysées with such speed that they were already
far beyond pursuit before the unhappy lady suspected that he whom she
loved was at all hurt, much less that he was killed.
"Did you observe," asked the police officer, "if one of the men was
tall and strongly made and had red hair, and the other short and
high-shouldered?"
Mademoiselle d'Ermay could not answer these questions; she felt
certain, however, that the man, who had killed M. de Fosseux was
tall, and her impression was confirmed by the fact of the blow having
evidently been struck from above downwards. There were at that time
in Paris two highwaymen, one of whom was called Pierre le Mauvais,
and the other Guillaume le Bossu. These worthies were the theme of
market-places and wine-shops, and as every robbery and murder committed
in the capital was attributed to them, this was of course laid at their
door.
Whilst listening attentively to this examination, and marking the
profound grief of Eugenie--her deathlike paleness and her silent
despair--I could not but pity M. de Fosseux, whom cruel fate had thus
severed at the early age of thirty-two, not only from life, but from so
young and lovely a companion. As Mademoiselle d'Ermay had mentioned
the name of the Comtesse de T----, the officer of police called upon
this lady in order to ascertain the truth of the statement as to her
supper party, and found it to be perfectly correct. The comtesse, as
soon as she heard of the sad event, hastened to assure Mademoiselle
d'Ermay of her sympathy by every demonstration of kindness and
affection, and, determined not to leave her in a house now become one
of mourning, with the corpse of M. de Fosseux for her sole companion,
insisted on taking her instantly to her own. Mademoiselle d'Ermay
consented on one condition, namely, that she should be permitted once
more to look on him who had been the only object she had loved on
earth. I was present at this last scene of this sad drama. Mademoiselle
d'Ermay said nothing, but throwing herself on her knees by the side of
the bed on which they had laid M. de Fosseux, her hands convulsively
clasped together and her head sunk on her breast, she was absorbed for
some minutes in fervent prayer, when, suddenly rising and turning to
Madame de T----, she said, "I am ready, madame." She then immediately
quitted the house in that silence which is the surest sign of profound
affliction, and having seen her safely conveyed to Madame de T---- 's,
I took my leave.
On reaching my own abode, I fell into a reverie in which I could not
help contrasting the attachment of such a woman as Mademoiselle d'Ermay
with the light and heartless nature of my connection with Zephirine.
Yet all my feelings revolted at the odious comparison. What? could I
for a moment, even in thought, place a young lady of good family, well
educated, and whom the arts of a seducer, under the guise of a friend,
had betrayed into her first and only error--could I for an instant
allow myself to place her in the same class with an opera-dancer? I
hated myself for the very thought, which could never have suggested
itself but to one who had never known any other sort of tie than such
as had bound me to Zephirine--who had never been loved, nor ever felt
the genuine passion. I slept not that night, nor did I wish to sleep;
my mind was too fully occupied in recalling every movement, every
gesture, every word that fell from the lips of Mademoiselle d'Ermay;
her gentle countenance, her angelic look, and that brow so fair and
so open, whose polished surface even terror the most appalling had
not been able to ruffle. Still I was not in love with her; I merely
tried to recall her features, which the darkness of the night and the
uncertain glimmer of candles had not enabled me to see and examine so
perfectly as I could have wished. However, I promised myself better
success the next day, when I resolved to observe her with the closest
attention, although I felt that in so doing I was rashly exposing
myself to that undefinable and seducing something which hung around her
like a charm.
II.
It was, perhaps, the consciousness of the wish formed overnight that
determined me to see Mademoiselle d'Ermay. Neither had I any desire to
resist its power, but rather to feel it and succumb, for I was well
assured, that if such a one could be won, she was worth winning. I
shuddered when I reflected how few hours had elapsed since she had been
exposed to the dagger of an assassin, and could not conceive how it had
happened that till that time I had never seen Mademoiselle d'Ermay,
though she was living close by me.
In the mean time the family of M. de Fosseux caused seals to be placed
on all the property of the deceased, and with some difficulty allowed
the unfortunate lady to take away her clothes and some few trinkets,
and a small sum of money, which beyond dispute was her own, it being
found in a desk on which her name was engraved, and of which she had
the key. That the family of M. de Fosseux should look upon her with no
friendly eye was, perhaps, natural enough. However, in a few days, the
heir-at-law of the deceased waited upon her, and said,
"Mademoiselle, M. de Fosseux having been cut off thus suddenly, has
left no will; had he been able to foresee his death, there can be no
doubt that he would not have forgotten to make due provision for you;
it therefore devolves on me, as a duty, to supply that defect, and to
fulfil his intentions."
"No, sir," replied Mademoiselle d'Ermay, "I never asked anything from
M. de Fosseux, nor ever expected anything; our connection was free
from all pecuniary considerations, present or future; excuse me from
accepting any thing."
In this refusal Mademoiselle d'Ermay was immovable. But to return to
myself. The next day I ventured to call on Mademoiselle d'Ermay, was
admitted, and became thoroughly aware how necessary was this second
interview, and better light to a due conception of her beauty. I have
said beauty, but she was, in fact, what might be called lovely rather
than beautiful, sweetness being the leading characteristic of her
countenance, across which, calm and innocent as it was, an expression
of archness would occasionally flit and vanish again into one of
softness and repose. An acute physiognomist, perhaps, might have been
led to suspect, from the form of the mouth and the compression of the
lips, that the repose of Mademoiselle d'Ermay's features was the result
of a strong will and a haughty spirit rather than a natural quality. Be
that as it may, to eyes untutored in that science this slight symptom
was not visible, and had no existence; whilst the simplicity and
modesty of her demeanor, and the perfect propriety of all her actions,
won every heart. Her grief was sincere, and her tears unaffected,
yet she did not wear mourning for M. de Fosseux; and whilst none
doubted that she deeply regretted him, all applauded the good taste
which restrained her from rendering her situation yet more remarked by
assuming the outward trappings of woe.
Some few days after the events of which I have just been speaking,
Mademoiselle d'Ermay hired a small room on the sixth floor in this very
house. When I heard (continued M. de Marigny) that the woman who for
the last ten days had never been absent from my thoughts was living
under the same roof with myself, I experienced a sensation of pleasure,
which was only alloyed by the necessity I was under of setting out that
very night for Versailles, whither my duty called me, and would detain
me for some time. I was even on the point of resigning my commission;
and but for the Prince de Beauveau, I really believe I should have
added this to the already pretty long list of my follies. Mere chance,
however, enabled me to make my stay at Versailles serviceable to my
passion, for, I must confess it, I loved Mademoiselle d'Ermay. I
happened one day to meet, in one of the ante-rooms of the palace, the
Comtesse de T----, who having an intimate friend amongst the queen's
ladies of honor, often came to Versailles. I seized the opportunity
to ask her a multitude of questions about Mademoiselle d'Ermay, and
ascertained the following facts:
Mademoiselle d'Ermay, though originally of Poitou, was born at Noyou;
her father, a man of rank, having spent his fortune at court, emigrated
to America, leaving a young wife and his daughter Eugenie, then only
six years old, with very slender means of support. Death, ere long,
bereft the daughter of her mother's care, when an old aunt brought
her desolate condition under the notice of the Archbishop of Paris,
by whose recommendation and influence she was placed in a convent
in this capital, and received the usual education of a nun, which,
though it failed to stifle generous feelings in her bosom, it taught
her to conceal them. Trained to keep the secrets of others she became
impenetrable as to her own, and hid a proud and resolved spirit under
the meekest possible exterior. Mistress of herself, her calmness and
presence of mind never for an instant forsook her.
"You have seen," continued Madame de T----, "how far Mademoiselle
d'Ermay carries disinterestedness, and may thence infer how faithful
and devoted a friend she is capable of being; but," added she, "I have
a notion she _could_ be a most implacable foe.
"The superior of the convent where she was educated was a relation
of M. de Fosseux, who often visited her, and thus had opportunities
of seeing her youthful charge, and of ascertaining how much she was
neglected and even ill-treated. Touched with compassion for her forlorn
condition, and smitten by her beauty, he found means of communicating
with her, avowed his sentiments, and won her heart. Nothing was easier
than to elope from the convent, as M. de Fosseux proposed; but the
young lady at once rejected so romantic a mode of proceeding, and went
to the superior and simply demanded her liberty. It might have been
expected that she would be asked what she was about to do, and whether
she was going; but as the old aunt had ceased to pay for her board, and
Eugenie was therefore a burden on the establishment, they allowed her
to depart unquestioned. She immediately repaired to the house of M. de
Fosseux, and their connection was one of unmixed happiness until the
late fatal accident dissolved it. I have now told you all I know."
"Then, madame," said I, "your friend is, in fact, penniless?"
"I cannot say," answered the comtesse; "it is a point on which Eugenie
is obstinately silent; she has refused to stay with me, and I think she
has had too much experience of convent life ever to go there again; but
I believe she has some secret but honorable resource which affords her
a decent maintenance. I have already told you that her father went to
America, where he died, and his daughter probably got whatever he left
behind him."
As soon as I was off duty at Versailles I hastened back to Paris; and
the first thing I did on reaching my old lodging was to mount to the
sixth floor, and present myself to Mademoiselle d'Ermay. I found her
occupying three small rooms, one of which served her for kitchen, and
the one in which she received me was simply, and would have appeared
poorly, furnished, but for the exquisite cleanliness and neatness,
which gave it an air of elegance. After due inquiries concerning her
health, I proceeded to congratulate myself on my good fortune in having
the happiness to be under the same roof; begged she would command my
services in any way in which they could be useful, and then hastened to
change the subject, for I saw refusal trembling on her lips.
"I am sorry," said I, "to see you in such apartments as these."
"They are quite consistent, sir," said she, "with my slender means and
the state of my mind."
I cast my eyes towards the window; she understood me, and, bursting
into tears, withdrew into the adjoining room to hide her emotion. In
fact, from this window not only the Place de Beauveau and the house of
M. de Fosseux, but even the windows of his apartments, were visible.
In a few minutes she reappeared, perfectly calm, with a serene and
even smiling countenance. Never have I known a woman who had so much
command over herself, or whose composure lent her such a charm. To see
her and resist her sway was beyond the powers of mortal man, and I
quitted her presence deeply in love, and resolved to leave no means
untried to gain her affections. At the same time I was quite aware that
I could not hope for success under a considerable length of time, even
if she had not really loved M. de Fosseux. To make a woman forget a
faithless lover is an easy task; to render her fickle, under ordinary
circumstances, is an enterprise in which many succeed; but to efface
the recollection of so bloody a catastrophe, whilst pressing my suit
in perhaps the self-same well-remembered words and expressions of its
lamented victim, seemed so all but hopeless an undertaking, that it
required the stimulus of the most ardent passion not to shrink from
it in despair. I had, however, some chances in my favor; I was young,
though some years older than Mademoiselle d'Ermay; and as time has now
shorn me of personal attractions, I may perhaps be allowed to boast
that I was considered a good-looking fellow; finally, in the eyes of
such a woman as I then loved, I had one special recommendation--I
was poor. Now Mademoiselle d'Ermay, though caring little for the
conventional rules of society, was scrupulous to the last degree in all
that related to sentiment, generosity and disinterestedness, insomuch
that the only circumstance which annoyed her in her connexion with
M. de Fosseux was, that he was rich. All she required was the like
absolute devotion as that which she herself rendered. It was to such
a woman as this that, three months after the death of, M. de Fosseux,
I hazarded a declaration of my passion. That I really felt what I so
warmly and so earnestly avowed, it required not a woman's sagacity to
perceive. I had given up all my favorite amusements--no more riding
and driving, no more evenings at the theatre, no more supper parties.
I had become pale and thin, and felt assured that Mademoiselle d'Ermay
was at no loss to what cause to attribute such a change in my person
and pursuits; neither did she affect to doubt the reality of a passion
of which the proofs were so evident, nor did she attempt to deny that
the human heart was not made for eternal sorrow, or that time could not
heal its deepest wounds, but she pleaded the very peculiar position in
which her lot had placed her.
"Chevalier," said she, "do not, I pray you, press me to return your
passion. Love can no more find entrance into my bosom, and you know its
dire consequences if it could: it is fatal--it is mortal."
"Banish," said I, in return, "such sad recollections. Why regard
yourself as the cause of an unhappy event to which you yourself had so
nearly fallen a victim? I can understand your repugnance hereafter to
wear, or to see worn by your friends, diamonds, or such valuables as
tempt the plunderer, but to renounce love at your age, and with your
beauty, that were indeed too much, especially when you have inspired
such a passion as mine; and oh! consider the difficulties, the trials,
the dangers inseparable from your present position, and tell me if,
instead of rejecting, you ought not, on the contrary, to seek some
one to whom you may look for assistance, and on whom you may rely for
support?"
Mademoiselle d'Ermay acknowledged all this to be true; nevertheless
she hesitated. At length, however, by dint of love and perseverance, I
succeeded in weakening her objections, and in satisfying her scruples,
and she consented to receive my addresses. She even confessed that I
was not indifferent to her; but when with expressions of love I mingled
promises and oaths of eternal fidelity.
"Have a care," said she. "I ask nothing; I require nothing; but
promises are, in my eyes, sacred matters. You are lavish of oaths--if I
accept them, I shall look on them as binding. Is there not some ancient
poet who says that "Jove laughs at lovers' perjuries?" I am more severe
than Jove. I give you fair warning, M. le Chevalier."
"Where is the lover," added M. de Marigny, "who, under like
circumstances, does not redouble all the oaths his mistress seems to
doubt? Where is he who would hesitate to swear that he is the most
truthful and constant of men? Who would not vow _eternal_ love to
_such_ a woman?"
My old friend here raised his hands and his eyes to the picture before
us, and remained for some moments in an attitude of deep and silent
admiration. At length he slowly withdrew both, and with a deep sigh
resumed his narration.
Mademoiselle d'Ermay consented, but reluctantly, and with the ill grace
of a woman who yields in spite of herself; however she did yield,
and quitted her apartments on the sixth floor for mine on the first.
From that moment, my friend, I knew the bliss of being loved, and
loved too without jealousy or quarrels, but with a sweet, constant,
and equable flow of affection which I had not hitherto believed to be
possible. No thought of the past, no anxiety for the future, seemed to
have any place in Eugenie's mind; but happy in the conviction of my
love, she manifested towards me as much attachment and even passion as
she had exhibited hesitation and reserve on consenting to my wishes.
Never, by any chance, did she allude to past events, nor did the name
of M. de Fosseux ever escape her lips. I was proud of my conquest;
prouder of the passion I had inspired--a passion which she did not
feign, but feel. There was no pouting, no jealous freaks, none of
those ebullitions of temper which so disturb the peace and harmony of
even the most attached couples: she was always in the same mood; her
countenance always serene, her words always sweet and soothing; nay,
more, my circumstances were, as I have told you, embarrassed; and I was
so deeply in debt, that I owed even the freedom of my person to the
interposition of the Prince de Beauveau, when Mademoiselle d'Ermay
undertook the management of my affairs, called on my creditors in
person, examined their claims, obtained time for payment, struck out
usurious demands; and, when my brother at length thought proper to come
to my aid, paid the stipulated sums to each with such business-like
accuracy, that my creditors gave me no further trouble, and in a
very short space of time I was completely free from all claims and
incumbrances. She held that a gentleman's word should be his bond,
and that no other security ought to be necessary or required. When I
reflected on the change which had taken place in the course of my life,
and on the growing ascendancy which Eugenie exercised over me, and
when I saw my foolish fancies and ill-formed plans give way, as they
continually did, before the influence of her firm and well-regulated
mind, I blushed to think how poor a figure I made, and what a mere
puppet I was in the hands of a clever but imperious woman. Far from
seeing love in all the care she bestowed upon me, I saw only a spirit
of domination which hurt my pride. Even Zephirine, the opera-dancer,
deceiving and abandoning me as she did at the very moment when I was
harassed by debts contracted for and by her, had less deeply wounded my
self-love than did Mademoiselle d'Ermay in thus devoting herself to my
interests. Such is man! vain and ungrateful! Such, however, were her
powers of fascination, that I could not help loving her, and whilst I
thus yielded to her sway, I had, as you see, this one secret feeling in
my bosom which I could not impart to her. How soon was I to be guilty
of other wrongs towards her! My elder brother died, and I became the
head of the family. I became rich, too, and might also lawfully claim
the title of marquis instead of that of chevalier. Will you believe
that I said nothing of all this to Mademoiselle d'Ermay? I sighed for
liberty; I wanted to enjoy my accession of fortune without her privity,
and to spend my money unrestrained by her good sense and unchecked by
her prudence. I went secretly to my agent and gave him instruction as
to my affairs, and all without saying one word to the woman who, till
that moment, had known my most secret thoughts, and was accustomed to
read my very looks. I thought of the figure my fortune would enable me
to make at the gaming table, which Mademoiselle d'Ermay had prevailed
on me to give up, and in all those pleasures which a Garde du Corps
of fortune can enjoy with his comrades. For these purposes it was
necessary that I should resume my duty, from which I had been absent on
leave for nearly a whole year, and I announced my intention accordingly.
"You choose your time ill," said Eugenie, in a quiet tone; "if you
resume service you must be less with me, and it is not prudent to quit
the citadel at the very time it is attacked."
When I asked an explanation of these last words, this was (continued
M. de Marigny), the substance of what she told me; and, that you may
understand their import, I must tell you, that before the year 1789,
the higher classes of our clergy were composed of the younger sons
of noble families, who were in the receipt of large incomes from the
Church; and the bishops and canons of those days, endowed as they were
with fat livings and rich abbeys, did not think themselves at all
called upon to reside on their several preferments, but lived in Paris
and about the court, where their course of life was not always strictly
evangelical. One of them, whose name I shall not mention, as it is
not material to my story, had remarked Mademoiselle d'Ermay. What had
particularly taken his fancy, as he said in a letter which Eugenie put
into my hands, was her youthful and ingenuous countenance, her retiring
manners, her love of seclusion, and her modest yet animated style
of conversation. He made her splendid offers, to which he attached
this one condition only, namely, that their intercourse should be a
profound secret; and, he added, that in leaving me she would, moreover,
silence the scandalous reports which had so long been circulated to her
disadvantage.
"It was Tartuffe," said M. de Marigny, with a bitter laugh; "trying
to wean Elmire from the gallants of the court, by offering her love
without scandal, and pleasure without danger."
"You know," said Eugenie, when she showed me this letter, "that even
if I were free to accept an offer, and this right reverend gentleman
pleased me, I could never stoop to such a mere bargaining as this; but
I love you, my friend, and you alone, and I show you this letter only
because we have no secrets from each other."
Thus, at the very moment when she was sacrificing for my sake an ample
and secure provision, I, on my part, was concealing from her my new and
altered position in life; yet at the same time I knew she had nothing,
for her father was not dead, as Madame de T. supposed, and had never
sent her a single _sou_. I was on the point of confessing all; but
false shame restrained me, and I set off for Versailles. I was like a
man who vainly endeavors to break his bonds.
When I quitted Eugenie and galloped through the Champs Elysées and up
to the quarters of my troop I breathed freely. I felt I was at liberty;
but twenty-four hours had hardly elapsed ere I grew weary of this same
liberty and longed to see Eugenie again, and to resume that yoke of
which I was ashamed I knew not why, for it was easy, and had become
necessary to me. What would have become of me if Eugenie had accepted
the offers of that libertine priest and left me! So in the middle of
the night I mounted my horse and went back to Paris. I found her, as
usual, thinking of me, and hoping, if not expecting, my speedy return.
I then took to play, but its chances failed to excite me. I suffered
myself to be dragged out to those supper parties which I had once found
so pleasant, but it was only to cast my eyes round the circle in search
of _her_, and when they found her not, nor ever rested on a face so
beaming as hers, weariness soon crept over me, and I found the dishes
tasteless, the wine vapid, and the conversation dull.
In the mean while, I had reached that period of life at which ambition
becomes a ruling passion, and mine was to be rich. Without rendering
me avaricious, Mademoiselle d'Ermay had taught me to know the value
of money. I had known poverty and endured most of its attendant
privations, and I was now in the possession of a large and unexpected
fortune, but I wanted more. Just at this time I received a letter from
my mother.
M. de Marigny here paused for a moment and appeared lost in thought;
he was like a man who hesitates to finish the story he has begun, and
who, having disclosed one half of his secret, has some misgiving as to
telling the other half, when, suddenly seizing my hand and looking me
full in the face.
"Sir!" said he, in a tone of voice so solemn that it sent the blood
back to my heart, and caused my not very weak nerves to tremble; "I
was considering whether I ought not to require you to swear that you
will never reveal to any mortal ear what I am about to relate (the
perspiration stood in large drops on his venerable forehead); but 'tis
no matter--I have begun and I will finish--my story may be useful as a
lesson and a warning to others."
He went on.
My mother suggested, that as the period of mourning for my brother
was over (alas! wishing to conceal that event from Eugenie I had not
worn any), it was time to look into the affairs of a family of which
I was now become the head. She advised me to resign my commission in
the Gardes du Corps as an idle sort of life without any chance of
promotion, and, as if she had read my thoughts, added, that I had
nothing to do but to enjoy my wealth and at the same time increase
it, for which there was a ready mode and present opportunity. It was
this. She had selected for my brother the best match in the county--the
marriage was fixed, the settlements agreed upon, and the contract
drawn, when his death deranged all; why should not I carry into effect
so well-formed and advantageous a plan? The young lady in question
had known but little of my brother; she had no attachment to him, and
merely married him because her family wished it. She was, moreover,
young, pretty, and very rich. My mother urged me to quit Paris without
delay, and come and secure a match which would double my fortune. Being
thirty years of age, and completely my own master, I did not consider
obedience, especially in such a matter, a duty I owed to the commands
even of a mother; but I saw in the proposal an opportunity which might
never again offer of breaking bonds which every day became tighter,
and more and more wounded my pride. Besides, the _money_, the _money_
tempted me. "Why," said I to myself, "should I not be able to love
this pretty girl whom they propose I should marry? She is, perhaps,
even handsomer than Mademoiselle d'Ermay; and who knows but she may
love as well, and without subjecting me to that sort of sway I feel
so onerous?" I reflected, too, on the false position in which I was
placed. I lived with a mistress, of whom I was not the first lover, but
only the second. Nevertheless, I knew Mademoiselle d'Ermay's character
so well, was so fully assured of her inviolate fidelity, and still
felt so much attached to her, that I could not make up my mind one way
or the other, and was in a most lamentable state of indecision. I had
without much difficulty thus far concealed from her the death of my
brother; but if I absented myself and went into Dauphiné, though only
just to look at the lady proposed for my wife, she would guess all,
and, on my return, my contemplated abandonment would be repaid by her
taking leave of me for ever. Some plausible pretext for leaving her
was therefore necessary--a mission, or something of the sort, from
government, on business in the north of France, whilst I hastened to
the south, and tried to find in the love beaming from other eyes a
release from that which had hitherto chained me to Paris. The absolute
necessity of concealing this new secret made me a totally different man
to what I was wont to be. I became moody and abstracted; and, whilst
brooding in silence over my own thoughts, and fondly fancying that I
never betrayed myself by even a gesture or hasty word, Mademoiselle
d'Ermay had divined the whole, and was tracking with unerring sagacity,
and into the inmost recesses of my soul, all my wavering resolves. She
saw my timid spirit halting between herself and a rich wife, whilst
harboring, perchance, some vague fancy for change. For so it is; we
are never content with that which we have, but we want more, or we
want something else, and are always wanting to be happy in some other
way than that in which we are so. Eugenie, herself impenetrable,
read my heart as if a book; yet she lavished upon me the same tokens
of affection, and always received me with the same sweet and calm
demeanor. At length, one day, when I was in my study, debating with
myself how and where I should answer my mother's letter, Mademoiselle
d'Ermay entered, every feature of her sweet round face elongated and
sharpened and fixed in frightful rigidity; her soft eyes glared, her
rosy lips were bloodless. I thought she was suddenly seized by illness,
or that some cruel accident had affected her reason. She appeared to
stagger, and I was rising from my seat to support her, when her hand,
laid on my shoulder, pressed me back again into my chair. The skirt of
her dress was turned up as high as her waist, and within its folds her
clenched hands held something which, at each movement she made, sounded
like the small stones in a child's rattle.
"Is it you, Eugenie?" said I.
"Yes, it is I. Do not you know me? _I_ am not changed; _I_ am still the
same."
So she said; but it was no longer the same woman. Her very voice was
altered, a Gorgon, a Megæra stood before me.
"Eugenie! Eugenie!" cried I.
She looked at me steadfastly, and as though the innermost thoughts of
my mind were written on my forehead; and the first words she uttered
fully apprised me that she knew one of my secrets.
"M. le Marquis," said she: she knew my brother was dead. "M. le
Marquis," she continued, in hoarse accents; "listen to me. I have never
mentioned M. de Fosseux to you, and you do not know his story. I must
tell it you. I was the inmate of a convent, young and fair, unhappy
it is true, but pure of heart and discreet in conduct. I might, like
my companions, have taken the veil and passed my life in a cloister,
without either pain or pleasure. M. de Fosseux saw me, and fell in love
with me. You can never know what pains he took, what arts he practised
to seduce me, for I was then a virtuous girl, and my reputation, was
without spot; and though I do not reproach myself for what I have
done--yet I well know that in the world I have judges more severe than
my own conscience."
I made a second attempt to rise; not that I at all foresaw what was
coming, but merely for the purpose of saying a few words to calm her,
but she promptly shut my mouth by fiercely commanding me to listen.
"So pressing were his instances, so solemn his oaths, that they
convinced me of the violence and sincerity of his passion. I listened
and believed, and he prevailed. Yes, M. le Marquis, I believed his
oaths of fidelity. I loved him; not so well as I love you; still I
loved him. Alas, marquis! I ask you, for you know well, be it pride or
be it self-devotion, what have I ever required in return for my love?
Nothing but a steadfast observance of the faith pledged to me, and you
have not now to learn how I have kept that which I myself plighted. I
ask no contract; I demand no guarantee. I live upon the present without
one thought of the past, or one anxiety for the future, confiding in
the _honor_ of the man I love with a feeling of security, which is at
once my joy and my pride; faithful, I never asked but for faith; and,
poor as I am, have I not rejected offers to be rich? Thus much then
have I done for you and for M. de Fosseux; but M. de Fosseux deceived
me; he ceased to love me, he was in treaty for a wealthy bride, and,
cowardly as perfidious, heaped upon me the outward signs and tokens of
a love he no longer felt; and why? Because he wished not to abandon me
till the last moment--because he wished to deceive me until he could no
longer wear a mask. This, marquis, was what M. de Fosseux intended to
do, and this was what he would have done had he lived one week longer.
I knew the name of his betrothed; and I knew the amount of the dowry to
which the cupidity of my lover was about to sacrifice me. Now, marquis,
what did such perfidy deserve? What was a woman to do who had asked
nothing, exacted nothing, and to whom so much had been promised? Her
prospects blasted and her honor lost--a cherished inmate of your home,
whilst the fancy lasts; but appetite once satiated, turned out without
one----. This the return for all her constancy and devotion: disgrace,
base desertion, and, as if injury were not enough, you add mockery and
insult, by smiling in her face whilst you are preparing to pierce her
to the heart."
Whilst thus speaking (continued M. de Marigny), the looks of
Mademoiselle d'Ermay assumed a yet more fierce expression, her voice
became hoarser, her gestures more violent, and, with her increased
agitation, whatever she had folded up in her dress returned a yet more
alarming sound.
As for me, frightened, appalled, my hands trembling, and my forehead
bathed in a cold sweat, I attempted to mutter something, I knew not
what. No, never did Clairon, nor Dusmenil, nor your Siddons, whom I had
seen some years before in England, so freeze my blood in the deepest
tragedy. Struck by the resemblance between my own conduct and that of
M. de Fosseux, I at length exclaimed,
"Eugenie! Eugenie! of whom are you speaking? What do you mean?"
"Of whom am I speaking? Of M. de Fosseux to be sure. What other man
could be capable of a similar crime--of such base perfidy? Do you
imagine it to be possible that there can be in the world two men so
heartless--so utterly devoid of honor?"
"No, Eugenie," exclaimed I again; "No! I will never abandon
you--_never_----"
"And who is talking of _you_, marquis?" retorted she sharply; "I am
speaking of M. de Fosseux."
I could not believe my eyes; my ears, too, nay all my senses seemed in
combination to deceive me. I would have given all I was worth for some
of the servants to enter and dissolve the spell.
"I am speaking to you of M. de Fosseux," repeated she. "Do you
remember, marquis, the day--or rather the night--on which we met for
the first time? _That_ man dead at my feet--myself stretched in the
gory mire of the Place Beauveau--the dagger yet in the dead man's
breast--the blood with which I was covered--my cries, my tears, my
bruised neck, my torn ears, my story of two robbers, my swoons, my
sobs.... Do you remember all this, marquis? Well, then, 'TWAS I--'TWAS
I, I tell you!"
At these last words I uttered a loud cry, and was about to rush out of
the room, but she held me fast.
"'Twas I, I tell you; _alone_ I struck the traitor, and here are my
proofs."
"Saying this, she opened her hands, and shook her dress, when brilliant
buckles, a necklace of rubies, diamond rings, and a gold watch, rolled
glittering on the floor, and seemed to hem me in on all sides with
their sparkling points, whilst in the midst of these bloody relics lay
a letter, which I instantly recognized as my mother's!
"Mr. D----," said the old man to me--who was motionless, and scarcely
dared to draw my breath--"I have been an old soldier, and, thank God!
was never looked upon as a coward; many is the time I have boldly faced
danger, and have, too, exposed my life through mere fool-hardiness; but
a man may have courage, yet not all kinds of courage; I was frightened,
Mr. D----; the blood rushed to my head, my hair stood on end, my
temples throbbed audibly, and I fell senseless on the floor."
When I came to myself (continued M. de Marigny) I found myself in bed;
a copious bleeding had removed all immediate danger, and I seemed as
though awaking out of a troubled sleep, in which I had been haunted by
some fearful dream. Mademoiselle d'Ermay was at my side, with her sweet
countenance, her words of love, and her tender and affectionate looks,
and held both my hands in hers. Tears were stealing down her fair
cheeks, and as soon as I opened my eyes she threw herself into my arms.
"Oh! chevalier," said she, "what an alarm you have caused me! Cruel
man! to go into your own room without saying you were ill, and remain
there alone and without help! Oh, my friend! however troublesome you
may think me, I will never leave you again--I will follow you even
into your study; but, my dear chevalier, I hope you will believe me in
future."
Believe you! (exclaimed I) starting up. She laid me down again, and
replaced my head on the pillow. Ah! said she to herself, there is still
some delirium here; and then, addressing me.
"Yes, my chevalier, _believe_ me. What has been my advice to you for
these several days past? Has it not been to lose a little blood this
spring time?--yet you would not be prevailed on to follow it. Your
physician himself says that one bleeding would have saved you your
illness, and me my fright. I do hope, chevalier, you will be more
docile next spring."
I shut my eyes, and essayed to retrace in thought all the circumstances
of the scene under which I had so recently sunk. Though my head was
confused, and my body weak, I recalled every thing present and past. My
memory carried me back to the Place Beauveau--again I saw the features
of M. de Fosseux pale in death, and Mademoiselle d'Ermay's look of
despair. Moreover, as a principal witness in the unhappy business,
having been the first person who arrived at the spot where the murder
was committed, I was examined by the magistrate, and had read over
Mademoiselle d'Ermay's deposition, in which she had described the
several articles of the stolen jewelry with the greatest accuracy. I
then mentally compared this careful and exact description, as given
in the said deposition, with the articles which Eugenie had thrown
down before me, and I seemed to see and recognize them all: a gold
enamelled watch, a necklace of rubies, diamond ear-rings, rings set in
brilliants, and ... my mother's letter! I had hidden that letter in a
secret drawer in my desk, which the maker of it had shown me alone how
to open, and he was dead before I knew Eugenie; yet that letter had
fallen at my feet! I saw the black seal, and thought I read the address
in my mother's handwriting. It was impossible I could have dreamt all
this! Another idea dwelt painfully on my mind: I have already told
you the murder of M. de Fosseux was generally attributed to two men
of desperate character, Pierre le Mauvais and Guillaume le Bossu. The
police had diligently followed this scent, and, after tracing them to
various haunts, at last succeeded in capturing both; but they proved,
most clearly and incontestably, that they were both at Ronen on the
night of the murder, and all the other researches of the police had
been in vain. Knowing all these circumstances as I did, they now
recurred to my mind in such force as to bring on a fresh attack and
another fit, which had obliged them again to call in my surgeon. What
he found it necessary to do I know not; I only know that the result was
long doubtful, and that nothing could equal the sorrow and assiduous
care of Mademoiselle d'Ermay so long as that doubt lasted. At length
I came to myself.... She was at the foot of my bed, and in that sort
of half-sleep which will sometimes overtake even the most wakeful
and indefatigable nurses. I but partly opened my eyes, and carefully
avoided making the slightest noise or movement. Her head rested on
one of her hands, leaving somewhat more than the side-face and her
fair cheek, now blanched by anxiety and watching, and the beautiful
hair that hung in clustering curls over her white forehead, open to my
view. Sleep often betrays our most secret thoughts, and the stuff of
which dreams are made is sometimes revealed by involuntary movements.
I narrowly watched her countenance; but no, there was nothing--she
slept as calmly as a child. "_She! she!_" said I to myself--"_she_
commit a murder! Could that white and delicate hand grasp a poniard,
and strike the man she loved a deadly blow, and that too in the middle
of the night, and in the open street? Why, the most practised villain,
the commonest stabber, is not so sure of his aim as to be certain that
his victim will fall without uttering one cry, and expire without
knowing the hand that slays him; and that Eugenie should dare to feel
more confidence in herself than such men do! and that she should
never exhibit any symptoms of remorse! That I, who was so constantly
with her, should never by any chance have detected any signs of a
guilty conscience! never have found her low-spirited or absorbed in
thought!" ... But I had seen her in my study--I had heard her terrible
confession--the rattling of the jewelry as it fell from her dress on
the floor, still sounded in my ears! Perhaps, however, I had dreamt all
this--perhaps this cruel vision, this horrible phantasmagoria, instead
of being the cause, had been the first symptom of my disorder? If so,
from what source had my imagination drawn these bloody horrors? How
had my heart and mind been able to engender such frightful calumnies
against the best of women? True, I was thinking of emancipating
myself from Eugenie's yoke, and of leaving her, in order to marry
advantageously; but even whilst I was planning our separation I did
justice to the angelic sweetness of her nature; and so far was I from
supposing her capable of committing a crime, that I thought with regret
of how many good and noble qualities I was about to deprive myself the
contemplation and example in leaving her.
Some days before the occurrence I have just narrated (added M.
de Marigny), one of my servants cut himself in moving a piece of
furniture, and Eugenie, who happened to be present, nearly fainted at
the sight of the blood; and when I joked her about her weakness, the
wound not being at all serious, "Chevalier," said she, "do not laugh
at me; you know I cannot bear to see even a chicken killed." I had,
indeed, remarked that, though in housekeeping affairs she was always
active and vigilant, she never went into the kitchen. I was in a
dreadful state of uncertainty, for, in spite of all my reasonings on
the subject, there was still the fact--I _had_ seen her--I _had_ heard
her; it was _herself_ beyond all doubt. Twice had her hand, pressing on
my shoulder, pushed me back into my chair. The more I tried to banish
these recollections, the more they crowded upon me; and whilst thus
tortured by these anxious speculations, I made a hasty movement as she
awoke.
"You then, of course," said I, interrupting his narrative for a moment,
"demanded an explanation of her terrible confession?"
"Impossible, my good friend," replied he; "I was by no means sure of my
own sanity, and Mademoiselle d'Ermay would have treated such a demand
as the ravings of delirium."
"You are very ill, my dearest chevalier," said she; "your mind has
often wandered since yesterday, and as the dreams of a sick man
commonly take their color from his waking thoughts, I have discovered,
whilst listening to the indistinct mutterings which fell from you
in sleep, that there is one sore place in your heart. You love me,
chevalier, truly and sincerely. I know you do,--but you are jealous!"
"Jealous!" cried I, in a feeble voice.
"Yes--but of the past; you have no doubt of my feelings towards you
now,--you do me that justice; but you are afraid that I loved M. de
Fosseux yet better."
"M. de Fosseux! M. de Fosseux! for God's sake, Eugenie, do not
pronounce that name."
"Why? Since yesterday it has been continually in your mouth, and you
have scarcely ever ceased to utter it and speak of him with bitterness.
Ah! my friend, let the dead rest in peace: you must have observed that
from the first moment of our connection, I never mentioned or alluded
to M. de Fosseux,--you must have made me forget him. Oh! believe me,
my chevalier, I swear--and you know how sacred I hold an oath--I never
loved M. de Fosseux as I love you. Do not then allow such painful
fancies to harass you; think how happy we are--as happy as it is
possible to be in this world,--so happy that every body envies us."
In saying this, her lovely face lighted up with a heavenly smile,
expressive of love and contentment; and if a small but almost
imperceptible cloud did rest for an instant on her calm brow, it was
easily accounted for by her anxiety for me. At length one morning I
awoke, and, not without a certain degree of satisfaction, perceived
that I was alone. She was not there. I rang the bell, and a servant
came.
"Your mistress?"
"Mademoiselle?"
"Yes, mademoiselle; where is she?"
"Mademoiselle is at church; it is Sunday," answered the servant.
She was attending divine service at the church of St. Roch, as she
never failed to do both on Sundays and saints' days.
I dismissed the servant, rose hastily, threw on my dressing-gown, and,
with unsteady step, hurried to the desk in which I had locked up my
mother's letter. The desk was untouched. At the very part of it where
the drawer was so skilfully contrived, and of which I alone possessed
the secret, there were some grains of dust, clearly proving that the
mysterious spring had not been touched for a long time. I opened it,
and there lay my mother's letter, exactly as I had, with my own hands,
placed it! Astonished and confounded, I went to Mademoiselle d'Ermay's
room. Her keys were on her dressing-table; _she_ had neither suspicions
nor secrets! I searched every where, turned every thing topsy-turvy.
Not a hole nor corner did I omit to rummage; and I shuddered the while,
for I was every moment expecting to find the watch, the rubies, and the
diamonds which I had seen, or fancied that I saw, scattered before me
on the floor of my study. But no, there was nothing of the sort. Was
it, then, a dream--a frightful illusion, and the mere forerunner of my
illness? By some strange contradiction, or some magnetic power which a
strong will exercises over a feeble one, I felt that I loved Eugenie
a hundred times better than ever, and crawled back again to my bed,
convinced that I had been mistaken, and the victim of a fearful dream.
I then considered the case in another point of view, and asked myself
whether, even supposing Mademoiselle d'Ermay to be guilty, she had not
some excuse for her crime? What could be more base and dishonorable
than to abandon so fond and devoted a woman? Had not M. de Fosseux
deserved his fate? And I, who had entertained the same design, and had
been on the point of committing the very same act of treachery, and for
the very same vile motive of adding to an already large fortune, what
was _I_, then? Had she meant to give me an awful warning of the fate
which awaited me if I proved as faithless as M. de Fosseux? I was lost
in conjectures. There was, perhaps, one way of extricating myself from
this labyrinth, or, at least, of throwing some light on the darkness
by which I was surrounded. I might ascertain from the family of M. de
Fosseux if at the time of his death he was engaged to be married. I,
however, rejected this idea; for, whether it proceeded from love or
from infirmity of purpose, I preferred darkness to light, and blindness
to perfect vision. "Yes," said I to myself, "I have dreamt it all; my
imagination has mixed up M. de Fosseux with the wrong I was myself
about to inflict, and, whilst meditating a crime, I have also imagined
its cruel punishment. Truly, I have had a shocking dream!"
My reflections had led me thus far, when Mademoiselle d'Ermay returned
from church. She came and took her accustomed place at my bedside.
"Eugenie," said I, "I have much to tell you."
"Do not talk, chevalier; you are still too weak for conversation."
"No, Eugenie, I am better. My head is clear, and my delirium past; so
listen. In the first place, my brother is dead."
"Accept my condolences, and allow me to congratulate you on your
accession to wealth and a higher title."
"My dear friend," said I again, "my mother has written to me. She
requires me to do two things; one is to go for a time to my estate
in Dauphiné, and the other to get married. Surely, then, this is the
auspicious moment to obtain the sanction of the Church to our union?"
"You are right, marquis," she answered, quietly, "for the king and
queen" (Louis XV. was dead), "and especially the Princess Elizabeth,
his majesty's sister, are very strait in their notions, and might
otherwise possibly look coldly upon you when you are presented."
Within a week we were married.
"She became your wife?" exclaimed I.
"Yes, and I am still in mourning for her, and shall continue to wear it
to the end of my life."
There was no change in our domestic arrangements; all went on as usual,
except that my friends and acquaintance, and my people, instead of
calling Eugenie Mademoiselle, addressed her as Madame la Marquise. In
the world my marriage was not blamed; on the contrary, it was approved.
It was an event which every body seemed to have expected, and, taking
place, as it did as soon as I became rich, was voted to be alike
honorable to Mademoiselle d'Ermay and myself. I must tell you a trait
which will enable you to judge how my wife--for so I must now call
her--interested herself in the events of my former life. A few days
after our marriage she said to me,
"My dear marquis, I used formerly to go sometimes to the theatre of
Audinet--did you?"
"Yes, marquise, often."
"There was at that time a young _danseuse_ on those boards who
attracted my attention: she was called, I believe, Zephirine; do you
remember her?"
"I had forgotten her, marquise, and but for your recalling her to my
mind I should never have thought of her again."
"She was a giddy girl, I understand," continued she, "and from
mere love of change left Paris and France some years ago with a
wealthy Englishman, through whose indulgence and her own indolence
she neglected her dancing--a talent soon lost without constant
practice--and she has grown fat and lost her agility. The Englishman
has become tired of her and turned her off, and she cannot get an
engagement even in London; would you now be so kind as to make her some
small allowance?"
I did so, and my wife would never listen to the confession I begged
her to hear. I then took my wife into Dauphiné, and presented her to
my mother, who at first received her very coldly, as I expected--for
this marriage had marred all her plans--but she was soon so won by the
unvarying sweetness of her temper, and the irresistible fascination
of her manners, that she conceived the warmest affection for her,
and no mother-in-law ever loved a daughter better. My good fortune
excited some jealousy, and the beauty of my wife much admiration. A
gentleman in the neighborhood fell in love with her, and was bold
enough to declare his passion; she instantly, and without the smallest
hesitation, informed me of the insult she had received, and I, as
promptly, decided on calling him out; a resolution which Eugenie at
first opposed, but on my insisting that as I had in former days fought
for a mistress I could not do less for a wife, she said, "Go, then, and
avenge me; if you fall, I will not survive you."
My antagonist was severely wounded; and this proof of spirit obtained
me the more credit in my neighborhood, as my cause was so just. The
revolution broke out whilst we were in Dauphiné, and I wished to return
without delay to Paris; but my wife dissuaded me. "You are no longer
in the army," said she; "you left it when you married me, and you
therefore owe no personal service to the king; stay here, where you may
perhaps be useful to others, and certainly so to yourself."
I followed counsels which had long since become the only guide of my
will, and it was well I did so, for we passed in peace and retirement
that period which was so fatal to our aristocracy; and when the storm
was over, "Now," said she, "let us go to Paris."
Here we lived in the enjoyment of happiness which nothing ever alloyed,
and of a mutual affection which age neither cooled nor impaired. Thus,
you see, my friend (continued M. de Marigny), I have been led through
life by my wife; but she strewed the path with flowers, whilst the
circumstance which, as it were, compelled me to marry her saved me from
the commission of a base and unworthy act, for which I should never
have ceased to reproach myself, and which would have rendered my life
miserable. Yes, all has been for the best.
"You mean by that," said I, "that you have had sufficient strength of
mind to control your imagination and to become thoroughly convinced
that preceding events were the mere dream of a delirious man?"
Wait awhile (quietly pursued M. de Marigny). Two years ago, my wife was
seized by sudden and severe illness; she had up to that moment enjoyed
invariable good health, and though she was upwards of fifty, her smile
retained all its sweetness, and her countenance was as serene as ever.
When she found herself unable to leave her bed, she gave herself up for
lost.
"I feel that I shall die, my dear friend," said she to me one day, "and
I have some few requests to make of you; you will not marry again--will
you?"
At these words I burst into tears, and poured forth again all my former
oaths, and which, considering our long attachment and my advanced age,
it was no longer difficult to keep.
"I know," said she, "you will never give your name to another woman;
I feel sure of that. What I wish is, that you should retire to your
estate in Dauphiné, and there, in peace and tranquillity, end your days
where your father and mother died and are buried; and, that you may
have no inducement to remain in Paris or ever return to it, sell your
house; and then, having no interest in the capital, you will find it
the more easy to perform what I have now requested, and what I feel
assured you will promise me to do."
I promised all she required; and in so doing it appeared to me that I
was adopting the wisest and most prudent course. There was, moreover,
in the idea of going to die amidst the tombs of my ancestors and of
mingling my ashes with theirs, a feeling of piety which melted me to
tears. Eugenie, once feeling assured that her last wishes would be
obeyed, asked for the attendance of a priest, and died with the same
courage and composure as had marked her whole life.
"Sir," said her confessor to me, "God is just and merciful. He pardons
the repentant sinner--your wife is a saint in heaven."
I will not attempt to describe my grief, my despair, and the state of
utter loneliness into which this sad bereavement plunged me: I have
other matters to talk of. When Eugenie was no more I had no longer any
will but my own to consult; and though deeply regretting the absence
of that sway I had been so long accustomed to, I nevertheless followed
inclinations which were no longer controlled. It was a feeling of piety
which had first made me promise to retire into Dauphiné, and it was
now a similar feeling which determined me to remain where I was. Why
should I go and die amidst ancestral tombs? Why make it a point of duty
to mix my ashes with theirs? I lost my father when I was a mere child;
I scarcely remembered him; and I had lived very little with my mother,
whereas, my whole life had been spent with Eugenie. It was therefore
near her that I ought to end my days, and in her grave that I ought to
find my final resting place; nor could I understand how it was that she
had not expressed a wish to that effect, and I persuaded myself that if
she could now see me she would approve of the change in my resolution.
When I had once made up my mind to remain in Paris, it was no longer
requisite or convenient to sell my house; and to tell you the truth,
I was very desirous to keep it. I had inhabited it from my youth; I
had improved and embellished it, and it recalled to my remembrance the
only woman that I had ever sincerely loved. My whole life had been
spent in it; in it had been acted the whole drama of my existence, and
there was not a corner nor a piece of furniture in it which did not
awaken some thought or recollection. I resolved then to live and die
in Paris. But, my friend, though our dwellings of brick and mortar are
more durable than those of our own mortal clay, they, nevertheless,
from time to time require repair, or they would fall into a state of
utter dilapidation. Several months ago, my people told me that some
tiling was wanted to the roof, and that the flooring of the rooms on
the sixth story was sadly out of condition. These were the rooms of
which Mademoiselle d'Ermay had been the last occupier; in fact, my wife
had always taken to herself these three rooms which she had occupied in
her poverty, and the keys of them remained in the hands of my people
till after that my grief had somewhat subsided. I wished to revisit the
scene of my wooing, and the hallowed spot where Eugenie had responded
to my passion. My first visit was made alone, and I gave way without
restraint to the feelings which the scene was calculated to excite.
On this occasion, however, I went up with the workmen. Time, and the
dampness of a room always kept closed, had almost entirely destroyed
the flooring. They set to work in my presence, and scarcely had they
raised up the mouldy boards and decayed joists, than I saw diamonds
glitter, and rubies, and gold--those dreadful jewels which had caused
me so much terror and such a severe illness--there they were, the very
same....
"Great God!" cried I; "then she _had_ killed M. de Fosseux!!!"
The old man NODDED.
From Household Words.
THE SPENDTHRIFT'S DAUGHTER. IN SIX CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
"Frugality is a virtue which will contribute continually and most
essentially to your comfort. Without it, it is impossible that you
should do well; and we know not how much, or how soon, it may be
needed."
So writes Southey to his son, Cuthbert, just then starting at Oxford.
The proposition might have been expanded from the particular to the
universal. Southey might have said, that in no condition of life, from
that of her who sitteth upon the throne, to that of the handmaiden who
grindeth behind the mill, can frugality--in other words, system and
self-denial as regards the expenditure of money--be dispensed with.
Self-denial and diligent attention in the management of this great
talent are necessary in all.
No one of the gifts of Providence appears to the casual observer to be
bestowed with less regard to individual merit than wealth. It would
almost seem, as an old divine has written, as if God would mark his
contempt of mere material riches by the hands into which he suffers
them to fall. Although, fall where they will, and on whom they will,
one thing is certain;--that they will prove but a delusive snare to
those who know not how to order them;--when to husband, and when to
spare; when to spend, or when to bestow.
These reflections arose from a story with which, not long ago, I became
acquainted. A common tale enough--one among a thousand illustrations of
what Butler affirms to be the indispensable condition upon which it has
pleased our Creator that we should hold our being:--that of controlling
our own actions; either by prudence to pass our days in ease and quiet;
or, by rashness, ungoverned passion, wilfulness, or negligence, to make
ourselves miserable.
He is sitting on the bottom stone of a magnificent flight of steps,
which lead up to a handsome door, situated in the centre of a large
many-windowed house, which, fronted with handsome iron rails round
the area, is built of fine brick, and ornamented with abundance of
stone-work, in cornices and architraves. This house stands in one of
the best streets in the neighborhood of Grosvenor Square.
He is clothed in garments that once were fashionable; but now are
discolored with much wear and long exposure to wind and weather; so
much so, that, in several places, they are falling into tatters. His
face--the features of which are very finely cut, and still bear the
traces of a once very remarkable beauty--is wan, attenuated, and
begrimed with dust, dirt, and neglect. His eyes are haggard; his hair
dusty and dishevelled--his beard ragged and untrimmed.
He is the picture of physical decay, and of the lowest depths of
moral degradation. He sits there upon the stone, sometimes watching
the street-sweeper--a little tattered boy cheerily whistling over his
work--now and then casting up his eyes at the closed windows of the
handsome house, upon which the beams of the rising sun are beginning
to shine; but to shine in vain at present; for it is only about six
o'clock in the morning, and life has not yet begun to stir within the
mansion.
His cheek rests upon his thin, withered, and unwashed hand, as he casts
his eyes first upwards, then downwards, then slowly, and with a sort of
gloomy indifference, around.
He looks upward. Is it towards the sky; where the great lord of
earthly light--type of that more Glorious Sun which should arise "with
healing on its wings"--is diffusing the cheering effulgence of the
dawn, calling forth the fresh and wholesome airs of the morning, and
literally chasing away the noisome spirits of the night? Is he looking
there?
No; he is no seeker of the light; he feels not its blessed influence;
he heeds not the sweet fresh rising of the morning as it breathes over
the polluted city, and pours, for a few short moments, its fresh,
crisp, cheering airs into the closest and most noisome of her quarters.
He cares not for that delicious brightness which gives to the vast town
a pure and peculiar clearness for a few half hours, whilst all the
world are asleep, and the streets are yet guiltless of sin and sea-coal.
What has light; the pure breath of the morning; the white rays of the
early sun; and the soft, quiet, and refreshing stillness of the hour,
to do with him? He only lifts up his eyes to examine a house: he only
casts them around to observe what goes on in the streets; he is of the
earth, earthy,--the sacred odor exists not for him.
Yet, in the deep melancholy, the expression of harrowing regret with
which he _did_ look up at that house--even in the very depths of his
moral degradation and suffering--the seeds of better things might be
germinating. Who shall say? He has sounded the very base-string of
misery: he touches ground at last--that may be something.
The sparrows chirped in the rays of the sun, and the little sweeper
whistled away. Different figures began sparingly to appear, and one
by one crept out; objects of strange aspect who seem to come, one
knows not whence;--the old clothes-man, with his low and sullen
croak; country carts; milk-men, rattling their cans against area
rails; butcher-boys swinging their trays. Presently were heard,
immediately below where the man was sitting, the sounds of awakening
life;--unlocking of doors, opening of windows, the pert voices of the
women servants, and the surly responses of the men; shutters above
began to be unfolded, and the eyes of the large house gradually to
open. The man watched them--his head resting still upon his hand,
and his face turned upwards--until, at length, the hall-door opened,
displaying a handsome vestibule, and a staircase gay with painting and
guilding. A housemaid issued forth to shake the door-mat.
Then he arose and slowly moved away; every now and then casting a
wistful glance backwards at the house, until he turned the corner, and
it was lost to his sight.
Thus he left a place which once had been his own.
With his head bent downwards, he walked slowly on; not properly
pursuing his way--for he had no way nor object to pursue--but
continuing his way, as if he had, like a ball once set in motion, no
motive to stand still. He looked neither to the right nor to the left;
yet seemed mechanically to direct his footsteps towards the north. At
length, he slowly entered one of the larger streets in the neighborhood
of Portland Place. His attention was excited by a bustle at the door
of one of the houses, and he looked up. There was a funeral at a house
which stood in this street a little detached from the others. The
plumes were white. It was the funeral of an unmarried person. Why did
his heart quiver? Why did he make a sudden pause? Had he never seen a
funeral with white plumes before in his life?
Was it by some mysterious sympathy of nature that this reckless,
careless, fallen man--who had looked at the effigies of death, and
at death itself, hundreds and hundreds of times, with negligent
unconcern--shuddered and turned pale, as if smitten to the heart by
some unanticipated horror?
I cannot tell. All I know is, that, struck with a sudden invincible
terror, impelled by a strange but dreadful curiosity, he staggered,
rather than walked forward; supporting himself as he went against the
iron rails, and thus reached the steps of the house just as the coffin
was being carried down.
Among the many many gifts once possessed, and all misused, was one of
the longest, clearest, and quickest sights that I ever remember to have
heard of. His forlorn eye glanced upon the coffin; it read:
"ELLA WINSTANLEY,
Died June 29, 18..
Aged Twenty-three."
And he staggered. The rails could no longer support him. He sank down
upon the flagstones.
The men engaged about the funeral lifted the poor ragged creature
up. A mere common beggar, they thought; and they were about to call
a policeman, and bid him take charge of him; when a lady, who was
standing at the dining-room window of the house, opened it, and asked
what was the matter?
"I don't know, Ma'am," said the undertaker's man; "but this here gent
has fallen down, as I take it, in a fit, or something of the sort.
Policeman, hadn't you best get a stretcher, and carry him to the
workhouse or to the hospital?"
"No," said the lady, "better bring him in here. Mr. Pearson is in the
house, and can bleed him, or do what is necessary."
Upon which the insensible man was carefully lifted and carried by two
or three of the men up the steps. At the door of the hall they were
met by the lady who had appeared at the window. She was evidently a
gentlewoman by her dress and manners. She was arrayed very simply. Her
gray hair was folded smoothly under her bonnet-cap; her black silk
cloak still hung upon her shoulders; her bonnet rested upon a pole
screen in the dining-room. It seemed by this that she was not a regular
inhabitant of the house in which she exercised authority. Nothing could
be more gentle and kind than the expression of her calm, but firm
countenance; but upon it the lines of sorrow, or of years, were deeply
traced. She was, evidently, one who had not passed through the world
without her own portion of suffering; but she seemed to have suffered
herself, only the more intimately to commiserate the suffering of
others.
They laid the stranger upon the sofa in the dining-room; and, at the
lady's desire, sent for Mr. Pearson, who was the house apothecary.
Whilst waiting for him, she stood with her eyes fixed upon the face of
the stranger; and, as she did so, curiosity, wonder, doubt, conviction,
and astonishment were painted in succession upon her face.
Very soon Mr. Pearson appeared, and advised the usual remedy of
bleeding. The lady walked to the window, and stood there, watching the
proceedings of those without, until the arrangements of a very simple
funeral were terminated, and the little procession, which attended the
young Ella Winstanley to her untimely grave, gradually moved on, and
disappeared at the turning of the street.
The countenance of the lady, as she returned to the sofa, showed that
she had been very much moved by the sight.
Having been bled, the stranger opened his eyes; which now, as he lay
there, extended upon the sofa, displayed a gloomy but remarkable
beauty--a beauty, however, arising rather from their form and color,
than from their expression, which was more painful than interesting.
Again the lady fixed her eyes upon his face, and again she shuddered,
and half turned away. Pity, disgust, and regret, were mingled in her
gesture.
The stranger's eyes followed her, with a dreamy and unsettled look. He
seemed to be as mazed with wonder as she was.
She turned again, as if to satisfy her doubts. His eyes met hers; and,
as they did so, recollection seemed to be restored.
"Where am I, and what is it?" he muttered.
"You are where you will be taken good care of until you are able to be
removed," said the lady. "Is there any one you would wish to have sent
for?"
The man did not speak.
"Any one you would wish to be sent for?" she repeated.
"No," he answered.
"Any thing more you would wish to have done?"
"Nothing."
He lay silent for some time, with his eyes still fixed upon her.
At last he said, "Tell me where I am?"
"Where you are welcome to be until you can gather strength enough to
proceed to the place to which you were going when this attack seized
you. And that was--?"
"Nowhere. But what house is this?"
"A house only destined for the reception of ladies," she answered.
"Ladies! what ladies?"
"The sick who have no other home."
"A house of charity, then?"
"Partly."
"And that one--that one--that young creature, whose funeral--Do you
know her? any thing about _her_--?"
"Yes," answered the lady, with gravity, approaching to severity, "I do
know _much_ about her."
"Why--why did she come here?"
"Because she was friendless and deserted; poor, sick, and
miserable. She had given up what little money she had to supply the
wants--perhaps--who knows?--the vices of another. Happily there were
found those who would befriend her."
"And she accepted the charity; she received the alms?"
"She had learned to submit herself to the will of God."
He shut his teeth together with a something between bitterness and
contempt at these last words, and turned his head away.
"You are her father?" said the lady.
"I am--"
"Then you are a very wretched man," she added.
"Yes," he replied, "I am most miserable."
"You are one who have reaped from seeds, which might have produced a
rich harvest of happiness, nothing but black and blighted misery."
She spoke with unusual severity, for her soul recoiled at his aspect:
she saw nothing in it to soften her feelings of indignation.
"I have lived," he answered.
"How?"
"How! as others of my temper have lived. It was not my fault that I
was born with an invincible passion for enjoyment. I did not make
myself. If pleasure be but the forerunner of satiety--if life be
but a cheat--if delight be but the precursor of misery--a delusion
of flattering lies,--_I_ did not arrange the system. Why was virtue
made so hard, and self-indulgence so enticing? I did not contrive the
scheme."
"Such excuses," the lady replied, "the honest consciousness within us
rejects; such as your own inner conscience at the very moment you utter
them disclaims. She who is gone--a broken-hearted victim of another's
errors--hoped better things when she exhausted almost her last breath
in prayers for you."
"Prayers!" in a tone that spoke volumes.
"Yes, prayers."
"What is become of my other daughter?--I want to go to _her_."
"She died, I believe, about twelve months ago."
"Then I am alone in the world?"
"You have no children now."
"Are you going to turn me out into the street?" he suddenly asked,
after a short silence.
"The rules of this house--which is dedicated to the assistance of sick
and helpless women--will not admit of your remaining."
"I am going. You will hear of me next as one past recovery; picked up
out of some kennel by the police. You would have done better not to
have restored me. I should have died quietly."
"But without repentance."
"Repentance!" he said fiercely. "Repent while my whole soul is writhing
with agony? Ella! Ella! if I could only have kept my Ella, she would
have tended me--she would have soothed me--she would have worked for
me."
"Yes," said the lady, "she would have done this, and much more--but God
has taken her; has rescued her from your heartless selfishness." To
herself she added--for her heart was glowing with indignation--"Even in
this supreme moment, he thinks of nothing but of himself."
"She would have been more gentle with me than you are," he said, with
a half-reproachful sigh.
"Yes, yes--she would have felt only for you--_I_ happen to feel for
her."
"Which I never did."
"Never--"
"You say true," said he, musing.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
"Julian Winstanley----"
"He who won the steeple-chase yesterday? Who, in the name of goodness,
is Julian Winstanley? A name of some pretension; yet nobody seems to
know where he came from."
"Oh dear, that is quite a mistake. I beg your pardon--_everybody_ knows
where he came from. This bird of gay plumage was hatched in a dusky
hole and corner of the city; where his grandfather made a fabulous
fortune by gambling in the funds."
"He is as handsome a young fellow as ever was hatched from a muckworm."
"He is a careless, dashing prodigal, whatever else; and I never look at
him without thinking of Hogarth's picture of the 'Miser's Heir.' What
say you to him, Blake, with your considering face? Come, out with your
wisdom! You can make a sermon out of a stone, you know."
"May be so. A stone might furnish matter for discourse, as well as
other things; but I am not in the humor for preaching to-day. I can't
help being sorry for the scapegrace."
"So like you, Contradiction! Sorry for him! And, pray, what
for?--_because_ he is the handsomest, most aristocratical-looking
person one almost ever met with--_because_ he is really clever, and
can do whatever he pleases in no time (might have taken a double-first
at Oxford easily, Penrose says, if he would)--or _because_ he has got
countless heaps of gold at his banker's; and nobody to ask him a why or
a wherefore; may do, in all things, just what he likes--or _because_ he
can drink like a fish, dance like Vestris, ride like Chiffney; be up
all night and about all day, and never tire, be never out of spirits,
never dull? Harry Blake! Who'll come and hear Harry Blake? He is going
to give his reasons, why a man who has every good thing of the world is
most especially to be pitied."
"I am going to do no such thing. The reasons are too obvious. I deal
not in truisms."
"Well, all I know is, that he won the steeple-chase yesterday, and
to-day he beat Pincent, the champion, at billiards. To-morrow he goes
to the ball at Bicester; and see if he does not beat us all at dancing
there, and bear away the belle, whoever the belle may be--though the
blood of a stockbroker does run in his veins."
"His blood may be as good as another's, for aught I know," said the
philosopher; "but I doubt whether the rearing be."
"It is the blood, depend upon it. Blake, you are quite right," said a
pale, affected young man, who stood by, and was grandson to an earl;
"the blood--these upstarts are vulgar, irremediably, do what they will."
"That not quite," said Harry Blake. "I have seen as great cubs as ever
walked behind a plough-tail who would call cousins with the Conqueror,
Warndale. But a something there is of difference after all; and, in
my opinion, it lies in the tradition. Wealth and distinction are like
old wine, the better for keeping. Time adds a value, mellows, gives
a certain body--an inappreciable something. Newly-acquired wealth
and distinction is like new wine--trashy. I rather pity the man who
possesses them, _therefore_."
"And I do not"--"And I do not,"--and "A fig for your philosophy!"
resounded from all sides of the table.
The philosopher looked on with his quiet smile, and added:
"I do not mean to say that I should pity any of those here present
in such a case, for we all know, by experience, that new wine, in
any quantity, has no effect upon them; never renders their heads
unsteady--was never known to do so. But you must allow me to pity
Julian Winstanley; for I think his wits are somewhat straying, and I
fear that he has already mounted upon that high horse which gallops
down the road to ruin."
And so away they all went to the ball at Bicester that night. Most
of them were somewhat more elaborately dressed than the occasion
required. Julian Winstanley was, undoubtedly. It had been his mother's
injunction, never to spare expense in any thing that regarded his
toilette; and dutifully he obeyed it.
I am not going to give you a description of his dress. Fancy every
thing most expensive; fancy, as far as a natural good taste would
allow, every habiliment chosen with reference to its costliness; and
behold him waltzing with a very pretty girl, who is, upon her side,
exquisitely dressed also. She wears the fairest of white tulles, and
the richest of white satins, and has a bouquet of the flowers from
the choicest of French artists in her bosom, and another negligently
thrown across her robe. Hair of remarkable beauty, arranged in a way to
display its profusion, and the very expensive ornaments with which it
is adorned.
Although the young lady--who is the daughter of a very fashionable
and extravagant man, celebrated in the hunting and racing world--is
well known to be portionless, yet she is the object of general
attraction;--a thing to be noted as not what usually happens to young
ladies without sixpences, in these expensive times. But it is the
caprice of fashion, and fashion is all-powerful. So Julian, who is
only starting in the career of extravagance, and in its golden age
of restless profusion, and far removed, as yet, from that iron age
which usually succeeds it--namely, that of selfish covetousness--is
quite prepared to cast himself at her feet--which with a little good
management of her and her mother's, he soon actually did. Having, as
yet, more money in his pocket than he knew how to get through, he was
exceedingly pleased with what he had done, and not a little proud in
due time to incarcerate this fair creature in solitary grandeur within
his carriage, whilst he and his boon companions rejoiced outside.
The connections formed by his marriage occasioned additional incentives
to expense. Introduced into a more elevated circle than he had as
yet moved in, and impelled by the evil ambition of outshining every
one with whom he associated, Winstanley soon found innumerable new
opportunities for spending money. He became a prey to imaginary
necessities. His carriages, his horses, his villas and their furniture,
his dinners, his wines, his yachts;--her _fêtes_ in the morning and her
balls in the evening, her gardens (which were for ever changing), her
delicate health, which required the constant excitement of continental
travel, and yachting excursions;--the dress of both; the wild
extravagance of every thing,--I leave you to picture to yourselves.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
What is five thousand a year, when a man spends six? Make it ten, and
he will spend twelve. There is an old story I have heard my mother
tell:--
A man had a legacy left him, so large, that upon the strength of it
he was enabled to change his plan of life. He sat down and calculated
the style in which it would henceforward become him to live. His
arrangement of income and expenditure would have been perfect, only
that the income fell short a certain, not very large, sum. This was
a sad business. A few hundreds more, and he would have been quite at
ease--he had them not--he began to feel rather poor. A letter arrives
from his man of business. There has been a mistake; the legacy is of
twice the amount it had been at first stated at. How will it become
him to live now? That is easily settled--he has only to double all his
expenses. Alas! And he remains twice as poor as he was before.
There is no limit to extravagance--it is a bottomless chasm which is
not to be filled.
The income does not exactly suffice--and no man ought to exceed his
income. True, but there are unexpected expenses--things that perhaps
may never recur. The prudent man economizes something else; the
imprudent man goes to his capital. He unlocks that sacred door of which
he holds the enchanted key in his hand--and ruin rushes out upon him as
a flood.
Julian soon began to touch upon his capital. It was but in small sums
at first, and yet it is astonishing how rich and easy (for the time) it
made him feel. A thousand or two thus added to a man's income makes all
mighty smooth, and the consequent diminution of his future revenue is a
trifle, not felt, and not worth thinking of. Desires increase with the
means to gratify them. He who takes a thousand or two from his capital,
soon finds it necessary to take more. Income diminishes as desires gain
strength; the habit of indulgence grows as the means to gratify it
decline.
What with borrowing, and giving bills, and drawing larger bills to pay
the former bills when they became due, Julian and his wife had, by
the nineteenth year of their marriage, eaten out the whole core and
marrow of their fortunes. The edifice now stood, to all appearance, as
splendid as ever--but it had become a house of cards over a bottomless
pit.
And yet they had children; they had not wanted those best incentives to
a better course. Their possessions in this way were not very numerous;
people of this description have seldom overflowing nurseries; the
mother is usually too fine a lady to look after her children herself.
She is contented with hiring some head nurse, taking her on trust from
some other young woman as heedless and negligent of her duties as
herself; and to her tender mercies she leaves her babies.
Such a nurse had lorded it in Mrs. Winstanley's family; an ill-governed
family in every respect, where each servant, from the highest to the
lowest, measured his or her consequence by the money which was spent
or wasted. Under this nurse's care two lovely boys had died in their
infancy. One little girl had tumbled somewhere or in some way--or had
been made to stand too long in the corner when she was naughty, or to
walk too far when she was tired, or what. I know not. All I know, is,
there was some internal injury, the cause of which no medical man who
was consulted could detect. The other, and only remaining child, was
a fine, handsome, spirited girl, of whom Mrs. Nurse thought proper
to be excessively proud and fond. And how were these little children
educated? Educated is an inappropriate word. There was no capacity for
education on the part of Nurse; but Mr. and Mrs. Winstanley, though
their dinners were just as numerous and profuse as ever, saw not the
slightest necessity, whilst the little girls were young, for the
additional expense of any better governess; and Mrs. Nurse was left to
give all the elementary instruction that was thought needful--a task
which she undertook with alacrity; having become somewhat apprehensive,
now the two little boys were dead and the two young ladies getting
bigger, that she might be superseded.
Her teaching consisted, first in shaking and scolding Miss Clementina,
and keeping her, with her poor aching hip, prisoner in her chair
till she had learned, a lesson--which, for want of comprehending the
absurdly long words of which it seemed purposely composed, it was
almost impossible she should learn; and secondly, in laughing at Miss
Ella's odd blunders as she read, and telling her every word as it
occurred, before she had time to pronounce it.
As for religion, morality, or knowledge of right and wrong, Mrs. Nurse
thought too little about such things herself to impart them to others.
I suppose she taught the children to say their prayers; but I am sure
I know no more than the mother did, whether it was so or no. Sometimes
the children were taken to stare about them in church; but not often,
for Mrs. Winstanley was in the habit of fulfilling the commandment very
literally, and making Sunday a day of rest. Commonly she spent the
forenoon in bed; only getting up in time to dress for a dinner party
which Mr. Winstanley made an especial point of having on that day. He,
as yet, paid this trifling respect to it; he abstained from going on
Sunday evening to a certain club which he frequented, to play cards, or
roulette, for unknown sums.
The elder of these children grew up, suffering, and spiritless; the
younger was proud, insolent, overbearing, and tyrannical--as much so
as such a little creature could be. They were fast growing up into all
this, and would have been confirmed in it, had not an accident arrested
the fearful progress.
Spoiled, flattered, allowed to indulge every evil temper with impunity,
Ella's faults were numberless; more especially to her helpless sister,
whose languid health and feeble spirits excited little sympathy, and
whose complaints seemed to irritate her.
"I declare you _are_ the most tiresome, tormenting thing, sitting there
looking as miserable as ever you can, and with that whining voice of
yours, enough to drive one mad. Why _can't_ you brighten up a little,
and come and play? You really _shall_ come and play, I want to play!
Nurse! O! she's not there! Do _make_ Clementina come and play."
"Don't, Ella! don't tease me so; pray don't! My hip hurts me; I can't.
Do let me alone, pray."
"Nonsense. You make such a fuss about your hip! I don't believe any
thing's the matter with it; only you're so ill-natured, you _never_
will do any thing I ask. Nurse, I say," as the door opened, "do make
her.--O, it's only Matty! Matty, where's Nurse?"
"She's just stepped out, Miss, and told me to come, and stay in the
day-room with you till she was back."
And Matty, the new maid, hired but a day or two before, came in with
her sewing in her hand, and sat down quietly to her work at the window.
"Matty!" cried Ella, imperiously, "don't sit there, looking so stupid;
but come and make this tiresome girl play with me. There she sits,
mooning over the fire. If Nurse were here, she'd soon have her up."
"Don't, pray, Matty," as Matty was rising from her chair. "Pray, don't.
I'll go and play; but indeed, indeed, it hurts me very much to move
to-day."
"Nonsense! Make her get up, Matty, You must mind me, Matty; you came
here to mind me; so do as you are bid, you ugly thing."
Matty indeed merited the title of ugly. She was rather tall, but of a
most ungainly figure, with long bony limbs, ill put together. It was
difficult to say what the features of her face might have been: they
were so crumpled, and scarred, and seamed. Not a feature had been
left uninjured, except her eyes: and they were remarkable both for
intelligence and softness.
She put down her work and went up to Clementina, saying, "What ails
you, Miss? I hope it isn't true that you feign sickness not to play
with your sister?"
The poor girl looked up, and her eyes were filled with tears. "Feign! I
wish I did!"
"Then your hip _does_ hurt you?"
"To be sure it does. So badly! At night, sometimes, when I'm in
bed--so, so badly."
"And do you know that, Miss Ella?"
"Know it! Why, who does not know it? She's always talking of it; but,
for my part, I don't believe it's half so bad as she pretends."
"I don't pretend, Ella; you are always saying that. How cruel you are
to set Nurse against me, by always saying I pretend."
Thus it went on for a minute or two, whilst Matty stood silently by,
her eyes wandering from one sister to the other.
At last she sighed, and said, "If it had pleased God to spare me my
sister, I wouldn't have served _her_ so."
Ella turned at this, and lifting up her eyes, measured Matty from head
to foot with indignant contempt. It would seem as if she thought it
almost too great a presumption in one so humble to have more care for a
sister than she had.
"Who cares how such as _you_ serve their sisters?"
"There is One who cares!" said Matty.
Clementina looked at Matty with puzzled wonder as she spoke. Ella
haughtily turned away, saying, "I should like, for my part, to hear who
this important _one_ is, that you mention with such a strange emphasis.
Some mighty fine personage, no doubt."
"Miss Clementina! Miss Clementina! only hear how shocking your sister
talks. Do stop her!"
"Stop me! I should like to see her, or any one, attempting to stop
me. And why, pray--and what, pray, am I saying so mighty bad, Mrs.
Matty? You? A charity girl? I heard Nurse say, but yesterday, that
she wondered her mistress would put up with such rubbish, and that
she loathed the very look of you, for you put her in mind of the Blue
Coat."
"I thank God," returned Matty, mildly, "that he raised up that
great charity for me, and many perishing like me, and saved us from
wickedness, and taught us to know His holy name. For He looks alike on
rich and poor, and will judge both you and me, young lady."
Both girls were a little awe-stricken at this speech.
But Ella soon recovered herself, and said, "she hated to hear people
talk like Methodists."
"What _are_ you talking about, Matty?" asked Clementina, gently; "I
don't quite understand."
"Not understand!--why, sure--heart alive!--it can't be as you are
ignorant of who made and keeps you and all of us! Sure! Sure!" Matty
kept repeating in a tone of much distress, "I can't believe my own
ears."
"I suppose we know about all that," said Ella, haughtily.
_She_ to teach her!--the child of charity to presume to insinuate a
want in her! The idea was intolerable.
She went and sat down at a table at some little distance, and pretended
to be busy playing with her bird, whose golden cage stood upon it;
but, as she did so, she listened in spite of herself to the following
conversation, passing between Clementina and Matty.
"I am so uncomfortable," the young girl was saying, rather fretfully;
"I don't know what to do with myself. I try this thing and try that
thing, and nothing gives me any ease or amusement; and I think it very
hard--I can't help thinking it hard--that I should have to suffer every
thing, and Ella, there, nothing; and then, Nurse makes such a favorite
of _her_, and nobody in the wide world cares for me. Oh, I am so
miserable, sometimes!"
"I used to be like you, once, Miss," said Matty.
At which Ella gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
But Matty did not regard it; and she went on and said, "Look at my
face, Miss Clementina; it's very horrid and ugly, I know, and I don't
wonder as Nurse calls me rubbish, and hates to see me in her nice
nursery. Many can't help feeling like that. Do you know how this was
done?"
"No. I suppose small-pox; but it's not like that, for your face is all
cut to pieces. I don't know how it was done."
"It was done by the dreadful agony of fire. When I was but a little
creature, living, O Miss! in such a place--five families of there were
in one low, dark, nasty room, and, O Miss! it was like the bad place,
indeed it was--such swearing and blasphemy when the men come home
drunk, and worse, worse, when the women did so too! Such quarrelling,
and fighting, and cursing, and abusing--and the poor children, knocked
about at such times anyhow. But my mother never got drunk. She was a
poor feeble creature, and mostly sat at home all day crooning, as they
call it, by the fire--for they kept a good big fire in winter in the
room. And then, when father come home he was generally very bad in
liquor, and seeking a quarrel with anything--for something he must have
to quarrel with. Well! One evening--O! I shall never forget it--a cold,
sleety, winter day it was, and the wind rushing up our court, and the
snow falling thick, and the blackened drops, and great lumps of snow
coming splashing down, and the foul water oozing in under the doorsill,
and all such a mess; and the poor, tired, or half-drunk creatures
coming in splashed and dripping, and quarrelling for the nighest places
to the fire, and swearing all the time to make one's hair stand on end;
and father coming in, all wet and bedabbled, and his hat stuck at the
top of his head, and his cheeks red, and his eyes staring, though he
was chattering with the cold. Mother was at her place by the fire, and
he comes up in a rage, like, to turn her out; and she sitting sulky
and wouldn't move; and then there was a quarrel; and he begun to beat
her, and she begun to shriek out and cry, and the women to scream and
screech. O Miss! in the scuffle--I was but a little thing--somebody
knocks me right into the fire, and my frock was all in a blaze. It
was but a moment, but it seemed to me such a time!--all in a blaze of
fire! And I remember nothing more of it, hardly, but a great noise, and
pouring water over me, and running this way and that. When I come to
myself, where was I?"
Ella turned from her bird, and her attention seemed riveted upon the
story. She forgot her pride and her insolence in the pleasure of
listening. Clementina seemed hardly to breathe.
"It was very bad being burned," she said, at last.
"Horrible, Miss!"
"Go on," cried Ella, impatiently; "what became of you?"
"When I got out of my daze--for I believe it was some time before I
came to myself--I was lying on father's knee, and he had made a cradle
for me, like, of his great strong arms: and his head was bent down, and
he was a looking at me, and great big hot scalding tears were dropping
fast upon my poor face.
"'My poor--poor little woman,' I heard him say."
"Then--for my eyes had escaped--I was aware that there was a beautiful
young lady--at least, I thought her more beautiful than the angels of
heaven--standing on the other side of me, right opposite my father, and
doing something to my poor arms."
"The lady was very young--seemed scarcely more than a child herself,
though she was a young married lady. She was beautiful dressed, all in
snow-white muslin, with white satin sash, and bows to her sleeves, and
a white rose in her hair. She had thrown a large bonnet over it--but
now it was tossed off, and lay with her shawl upon the floor. Bad as
I was--O! in such horrid pain--the sight of that beautiful dear angel
was like a charm to me; it seemed to chase away the pain. And then she
touched me so delicately, and spoke so soft and kind! It was music;
heaven's own music was her voice."
"Who was she? who could she be?" cried Ella.
"Why, Miss, who should she be, but Mr. Stringer, the apothecary's young
bride, as he had just brought home, and all ready dressed to go out to
her first dinner."
Ella turned away contemptuously, with a gesture that expressed "was
that all?"
Clementina said,--
"How nice of her to come to a poor little burnt child like you! and
into such a dreadful place too! But I wonder she came in her best gown!"
"As I heard afterwards, it happened that Mr. Stringer had been sent for
out, and was not come back; and when they ran screeching and screaming
to the shop, crying a child was burnt in the court hard by, and Mr.
Stringer was wanted, as there was no one to go but a little mite of
a shop-boy--for Mr. Stringer had but just begun business--what does
she do, but catches up a bottle of stuff for burns, claps her bonnet
over her pretty white rose, throws her shawl on, and, dressed in her
beautiful new wedding-gown, comes to this horrid den of dirt and
wickedness. She did me up as best she could, and then seeing my poor
father crying too, and all the people standing round, and yet not a
word to comfort him, she said, very gently and kindly, to him,--
"'Pray don't grieve so: she will be better by-and-by, poor dear. Don't
groan so badly, poor child! You are very sorry for her, poor man--but
don't take on so.'
"But the more she spoke in this kind way, all the more he cried, till
at last he seemed as if he could contain himself no longer, and he
groaned, and almost roared out.
"'Are you the father?' said the young lady. 'Where is the mother?'
"'Oh! here--here--here--my precious child, my sweet baby!' cried
my poor mother--and then went on, 'It was all of you--you big
brute--you--you pushed your own baby into the red-hot flames, as you
were atrying to get at me!--yes, my baby--my poor--'
"'Don't speak so loud, good woman,' said the young lady, gently. 'Lay
the child upon the bed,' turning round--'Bless me!--why, there is not a
bed!'
"'We are very poor people, ma'am,' a woman began; 'not a penny to bless
ourselves with. If you'd please to--'
"I remember my father's voice to this day--
"'Silence!' he called out, in such a passion, 'would you beg money from
the lady to spend in more gin? Give 'em nothing, ma'am--give none of us
nothing--only tell me what's to be done to save the poor little thing's
life.'
"She hesitated, turned, and looked round the miserable apartment. Too
true, there was not an apology for a bed; there was not even clean
straw.
"'Take her up in your arms,' said she to my father, 'and follow me.'
And she stooped and picked up her bonnet, and gathered her great shawl
around her, and stepped out into the rainy, sleety, windy night; and
my father--for some poor creature had lent an old shawl to throw over
me--took me and carried me after her: and a turn of the alley which led
into the court, brought us out into the street, where the apothecary's
shop stood. I was carried through, and up two pair of stairs, and into
a little mite of a room--but all so clean and nice--and laid, oh! in
such a delicious bed--and oh! it felt so comfortable--it soothed me,
like--and I fell fast asleep."
The two girls were silent for some time. Ella spoke first.
"What a good woman!" was the remark she made; "but was she only an
apothecary's wife," she went on; "and was her name Stringer? What a
horrid ugly name! Are you sure it was Stringer?"
"Yes, Miss--Stringer and Bullem--that was the name over the shop-door."
"What! did they keep a shop?"
"To be sure they did."
"How long did you stay there?"
"I never went away no more, Miss. When I got better, the lady began to
talk to me. I was a little mite of a thing, but I was quick enough. She
found what bad ways I was bringing up in; that I had never once heard
of Our Saviour--not even of my Maker--far from ever hearing of the
Bible--or having it read, or being taught to pray, or--"
The two young girls looked at each other, but said nothing. Matty, in
broken and interrupted sentences, went on:
"So she kept me; for she could not bear to send me back to that pit of
iniquity in which she had found me. And as I lay in my bed, one day,
and they thought I was asleep, I heard her arguing the point with her
young husband--
"'Why, child, you cannot pretend to adopt all the poor neglected
children in this bad town?' he said.
"'Oh no! I know one can do little--little enough: it is but one drop of
water in the vast ocean--only one little, little drop; but the oyster
took it into its shell, and it became a pearl. Let me keep this poor
little one. I don't mean to be foolish--indeed I don't--I will only
clothe her, and feed her, and send her to the charity school: indeed,
they will half clothe her there. Do--do, dear John--she is such a
miserable object! What is she to do? Let her be taught her duty--let
her not be a poor ruined wretch, body and soul at once.'"
"The young lady would have moved a stone with her talking. Her husband
was not very persuadable; he was not like her. He was rather a
cold-hearted, selfish young man, but he couldn't refuse her; and so,
when I got better, I was sent to one of the great charity schools in
the city, where I learned a deal; but my sweet Mrs. Stringer took a
pleasure in teaching me herself, and so I learned a deal more."
Enough of Matty's tale.
Mrs. Stringer, when she devoted such means as she could command to the
rescue of one poor child from the misery in which she was living, and
raised her from deplorable ignorance, as regarded all higher things,
to a knowledge of the supreme and only real good, little thought how
extensive her good deed would prove; and that in providing for the
religious and moral education of this wretched child, she was preparing
the means of a religious education--imperfect, yet still in some sort
a sound religious education--for two children of wealth and luxury, as
to such things, most entirely destitute. But so it proved--and this was
the only religious education they either of them could be said ever to
receive; so utterly, so entirely, were all relations of this nature
forgotten and neglected in this house of profusion, where not one
single thing, but the one thing needful could be said to be wanting.
The story first beguiled the attention, and then awakened the deep
interest of the two girls. From this day, a sort of acquaintance arose
with Matty, which ripened into true affection; for Matty was, in fact,
a woman of no common order.
She gradually awakened their sympathies with regard to subjects to her
the most deeply interesting. She led them, not unwilling, in those
paths which are indeed paths of pleasantness and peace. She read the
Bible with them, and to them, and she taught them the vital principle
of effectual religion--the need and the faith to pray.
I want space to follow the course of these influences upon the soul.
Imperfect they were. Such a teacher could not lead them very far; but
she brought them on Our Saviour's way. And though much remained of
wrong, inexperienced and unconverted--the change was as from darkness
to light.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
And now several years have elapsed, and these two girls are grown up to
be two beautiful young women. They had been taken out of the nursery
when it was time to be thinking seriously of accomplishments; and
the reign of Mrs. Nurse had closed. She was superseded by a regular
governess--a foreigner. A French lady was chosen to undertake the task
of forming two English girls to become English wives and mothers. The
French lady did well all that she was required to do; for neither Mr.
nor Mrs. Winstanley desired that their beautiful daughters should
receive any thing approaching to what is usually called a solid
education.
Mrs. Winstanley had not ten ideas beyond the arrangement of a party,
and the keeping of good society. As for Julian Winstanley himself, he
detested reflection, abhorred every thing approaching to seriousness,
only desired to get through life as brilliantly and as thoughtlessly as
he could.
He was not much at home; but when at home he required to be constantly
amused, or he found home intolerable. It was not long before his
daughters discovered this.
Till they were what is called introduced, these fair girls passed
their time secluded in the school-room, and saw very little of their
parents; but when they were once brought out, and when Mademoiselle was
dismissed and they lived in the drawing-room, they were soon initiated.
The plan of life was one not unusual among married people of a certain
class. A large and splendidly furnished house, in a fashionable square
in London, was _home_--at which about six months of every year were
passed; the remaining six being spent either in travelling, or at
watering-places, or at some hired house in the country. They lived as
a privileged order, severed, as by a gulf impassable, from the lowest
orders around them, and in little communication with the highest. The
last condition was not of much importance, but the other was fatal.
What can grow out of such a life, that is really wholesome and good?
Many, many residents in London, escape this mischief. They have broken
down the wall of separation which used to hide the very existence
of want and misery and sin from the happier and the better; and the
obscure dwellings of the London poor have their visiting angels, as
well as those in the country. But a great many families still neglect
this weighty duty, and live without thought of such things.
Mrs. Winstanley had led the regular party-going London life for the
last sixteen or seventeen years. She was beginning to get rather tired
of it, when the new excitement arose of having to "bring out" her
daughters.
This bringing out of her daughters became an excuse for all kinds of
amusing changes and improvements. Her receiving-rooms had to be newly
furnished, a new open carriage to be bought, the Queen's drawing-rooms
to be attended with more assiduity than ever.
The girls were two lovely creatures; they seemed to excuse, if any
thing could, the expenses thus incurred on their behalf. So said the
mother, and so thought the father. The love he felt for his daughters
was perhaps the only tender feeling he had ever experienced in his
life; for, in general, he might be said to love nothing, not even
himself.
It might have been the dawn of a better life, this well-spring of pure
affections, could he have worthily indulged them. But neither his own
nor his wife's habits admitted of that.
Mrs. Winstanley would have thought it a disgrace if she had been one
single evening disengaged whilst they were in London. Even in the dead
winter she managed to keep up the ball; what with little parties and
concerts, the opera, the French plays, and so forth, she contrived to
escape the horror of a domestic evening. As for Mr. Winstanley, he
seldom or never dined at home; except when there was a dinner-party. He
spent his evenings at his clubs, engaged--he too well knew how.
The two girls presented a striking contrast to each other.
Clementina was fair and delicate, with soft hair, and those tender
blue eyes, which to me are the most charming of all eyes. Ella
was a noble creature; a figure and form the most perfect that I
ever beheld--features of matchless symmetry--eyes dark, large, and
lustrous--hair in floods of rich brown waves--a hand that was a model,
from which statuaries contested to be allowed to copy--and a spirit,
energy, and feeling in her gestures and countenance, that won your
heart before you were aware.
It was upon her that Julian Winstanley doted. The other girl he
thought, and called, a sweet girl, but his Ella was his darling.
Nothing was too good for Ella; nothing was to be spared that could
please or adorn Ella. To ride with her in the Park; to visit the box
where she sat at the opera; sometimes in a party to hear her sing;
seemed to give him a new pleasure.
Yet there was nothing in all this, unhappily, to rouse him to a better
life; to break the chain of evil habits in which he was involved.
Ella was a child of this world; an impetuous, proud, haughty beauty;
a contemptuous disregarder of the weak, the wanting, and, above all,
the low, or the ugly;--living for the day, as her father lived for the
day--she for the day of vanity and pleasure; he for the day of vanity
and sin. There was that difference, indeed, and it was a vast one; but
he did not feel it.
There was no pure and holy influence of a higher and nobler life,
diffused from the beautiful being. She was no angel of light. She was
merely, to all appearance, a very fine, fashionable girl.
And Clementina, in her gentleness and softness, was little more. The
good seed which Matty had sown, had fructified at first, but the briars
and thorns were gathering fast around it. The pleasures of life were
choking it up. It was in danger of being altogether lost.
Matty had long been gone. She had married a respectable tradesman, and
was in a flourishing, though small, way of business. She would have
been altogether forgotten long ago, only that she would not suffer
this. She found herself still welcomed when she did come; for both the
girls loved her, and she perfectly adored them. So she came, bringing
her little offerings, from time to time--little matters such as she
dealt in, in her shop--humble, but, for her sake, welcome. These two
girls had both hearts. Where they got them I don't know.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
"Oh, Ella! Ella!--what's the use of your turning your head from
me?--Why, I can see you are coloring crimson--as if I had no eyes! Oh!
he _is_ charming, is not he?"
"How tiresome you can be, Clementina! I am sure I don't care. No,
not.... Besides, he's your flirt, not mine."
"Is he? I wish he were! But I know better. He loves you, Ella; and
what's more, you love him. And if _you_ don't know it--which perhaps
you don't--_I_ do, and _he_ does."
"_He_ does!--I like that!--_he_ does!--Upon my word! _I_ like him, and
_he_ knows it! I do no such thing."
"Take care what you say. Walls have ears."
"Pooh!--nonsense! And if they have, I tell you I don't care."
"You don't?--you are sure you don't? Oh, very well! If that be really
so, then I had better keep my message to myself."
"Message!--what message?"
"You know a man does not like to be refused; and so, if you really
do _not_ care for him, why, I had better hold my peace. He is
young, and he is volatile enough.... And, indeed, I have wondered,
Ella, sometimes, how you ever came to take a fancy to him; but I am
forgetting. It was my mistake. You never _have_ taken a fancy to him."
"How you do run on!" she said, taking the last rose out of her hair;
for she was standing before the glass, undoing her braids; the
sisters, having dismissed their attendant, that they might have a
comfortable chat together. And then the hair came all tumbling over her
shoulders, and upon her white muslin dressing-gown, and she looked most
beautiful--half pleasant, half angry--as she turned round; and, trying
to frown with her eyes, whilst her lips smiled, said--
"Cle., you _are_ the most intolerable girl in the world."
Cle. smiled, looked down, and said nothing.
"You may as well tell me, though."
"No, I won't, unless you will be a true girl--own what you ought to
own--say what you ought to say--that you do not _quite_ hate him. You
really may say that--and then we will see about it."
"Hate him! Did I say I hated him?"
"Or, pretended you did. Or, that he was indifferent to you."
"Well, well; I don't hate him, then."
"Then come here, and sit down by me, and I will tell you that Lionel
loves you, and adores you--and all that. Very easily said. But far more
than that--and with great difficulty said--he wishes to make you his
wife!"
"Ah me!"--and again the color flashed into her face, and such an
expression was visible in her eyes!
Suddenly she threw her arms around her sister, and embraced her
tenderly.
"You dear, dear girl," she whispered--"Oh, I am so--so happy! But tell
me--tell me--all, from the beginning. Lionel!--is it possible?"
"You thought we were very busy talking together to-night, at Mrs.
White's ball, didn't you?--You were a little jealous, were you not, you
silly thing? Ah, my Ella! My proud--proud Ella! To have made such a
tumble into love!"
"Nonsense!--how you talk! But tell me all he said. Every single word of
it!"
"He said he loved you more than his life, and all that sort of thing;
and that I must tell you so to-night; and, if you would give him the
least atom of encouragement, I was to take no notice, and he would
speak to papa and mamma immediately; but, if you hated him as much as I
said I was sure you did...."
"How could you say such a stupid thing?"
"I thought that was what I ought to say."
"How foolish you are, Cle.! Well?"
"Well, in _that_ case, I was to write. Shall I write?"
She did not write.
And from this time the existence of Ella was changed.
She loved, with all the fervor and energy of her nature; and life took
at once a new color. True love is of the infinite. None can have deeply
loved--when or how in other respects it may have been--but they have
entered into the unseen world; have breathed a new breath of life; have
tasted of the true existence.
What is often called love, may do nothing of all this--but I am
speaking of _true_ love.
Lionel seemed at that time scarcely worthy of the passion he had
inspired. Yet he had many excellent qualities. He was warm-hearted,
generous to excess, had good parts, a brilliant way of talking, and was
a favorite with all the world.
He had not the splendid gifts which nature had bestowed upon Julian
Winstanley. By the side of her father, even in the eyes of Ella, the
bright halo which surrounded her lover would seem somewhat to pale.
The young man even appeared to feel this, in some degree, himself. He
always, yet with a certain grace, took the second place, when in her
father's presence. Ella loved her father, and seemed to like that it
should be so.
"Oh, my sister! oh, my friend! what--what shall we do? Oh, misery!
misery! what is to become of us all?"
Clementina's eyes were swimming with tears; but she would not give way.
In passive endurance she excelled her sister.
She held her arms clapped closely round her; whilst Ella poured a
torrent of tears upon her bosom.
"My father! my beautiful, clever, indulgent father, that I was so proud
of--that I loved so--who spared nothing upon either of us--alas! alas!
how little, little did I guess whence the money came!"
Clementina trembled and shivered as her sister poured forth these
passionate lamentations; but she neither wept nor spoke for some time.
At last she said:
"Ella, I have been uneasy about things for some time. We are young, and
we have not much experience in the ways of the world; but since our
poor mother died, and I have had in some degree to manage the house, I
have been every day becoming more uncomfortable."
"You have?" said Ella, lifting up her head: "and you never told me!"
"Why should I have told you? why should I have disturbed your dream
of happiness, my dear Ella? Besides, I hoped that it concerned me
alone--that things might hold on a little while longer--at least, till
you were provided for, and safe."
"Safe! and what was to become of you?"
"I did not much think of that. I had a firm friend, I knew, in you,
Ella; and then, lately, since mamma's death; since you have been
engaged to dear Lionel, and I have been much alone, I have thought
of old things--old things that good Matty used to talk about. I have
been endeavoring to look beyond myself, and this world; and it has
strengthened me."
"You are an excellent creature, Cle.!"
She shook her head.
"But, my father! what is to be done? Can any thing be done?"
"No, my love. I fear nothing can be done."
"He loves me!" said Ella, raising up her head again, her eyes beaming
with a new hope. "I will try--I will venture. It is perhaps great
presumption in a child; but my father loves me, and I love him...."
Again Clementina shook her head.
"You are so faint-hearted--you are so discouraging. You give up every
thing without an attempt to save yourself or others. That is your way!"
cried Ella, with her own impetuosity, and some of her old injustice.
Then, seeing sorrow and pain working upon her sister's face as she
spoke thus, she stopped herself, and cried--"Oh! I am a brute--worse
than a brute--to say this. Dear Cle., forgive me; but don't, pray don't
discourage me, when I want all my courage. I will go--I will go this
moment, and speak to my father...."
Clementina pressed her sister's hand as she started up to go. She
feared the effort would be vain,--vain as those she had herself made;
yet there was no knowing. Ella was so beautiful, so correct, so
eloquent, so prevailing!
She followed her with her eyes, to the door, with feelings of mingled
hope and apprehension.
Down the splendid stairs, with their gilded balustrades, and carpets
of the richest hue and texture, rushed the impetuous Ella. Through
the hall--all marbles and guilding--and her hand was upon the lock of
the library door. She was about to turn it, without reflection: but a
sudden fear of intruding came over her--she paused and knocked.
"Who is there?" exclaimed an irritated voice from within; "go away--I
can see no one just now."
"It is I, papa--Ella; pray let me come in."
And she opened the door.
He was standing in the middle of the lofty and magnificent apartment,
which was adorned on every side with pictures in gorgeous frames; with
busts, vases, and highly ornamented bookcases fitted with splendidly
bound books--seldom, if ever, opened. His pale, wan, haggard face
and degraded figure, formed a fearful contrast to the splendid scene
around him, showing like a mockery of his misery. A small table, richly
inlaid, stood beside him; in one hand he held a delicate cup of fine
china; in the other, a small chemist's phial.
He started as she entered, and turned to her an angry and confused
countenance, now rapidly suffused with a deep crimson flush; but, as if
electrified by a sudden and horrid suspicion, she rushed forward, and
impetuously seized his shaking arm.
The cup fell to the floor, and was broken to atoms; but he clenched the
phial still faster in his trembling hand, as he angrily uttered the
words:
"How dare you come in here?"
"Oh! papa--papa!"--she had lost all other terror before that of
horrible suspicion which had seized her--"what are you about? what is
that?" stretching out her arms passionately, and endeavouring to wrench
the phial from his fingers.
"What are you about? what do you mean?" he cried, endeavouring to
extricate his hand. "Let me alone--leave me alone! what are you about?
Be quiet, I say, or by...." And with the disengaged hand he tore her
fingers from his, and thrust her violently away.
She staggered, and fell, but caught herself upon her knees, and
flinging her arms round his, lifted up her earnest imploring face,
crying, "Father--father! papa-papa! for my sake--for your sake--for all
our sakes; oh, give it me! give it to me!"
"Give you what? what do you mean? what are you thinking about?"
endeavouring to escape from her clasping arms. "Have done, and let me
alone. Will you have done? will you let me alone?" fiercely, angrily
endeavoring again to push her away.
"No! never--never--never! till you give me--"
"What?"
"That!"
"That!" he cried. Then as if recollecting himself, he endeavored, as
it seemed, to master his agitation, and said more calmly, "Let me
be, Ella! and if it will be any satisfaction to you, I will thrust
the bottle into the fire. But, you foolish girl, what do you gain by
closing one exit, when there are open ten thousand as good?"
Disengaging himself from her relaxing arms, he walked up to the
fire-place, and thrust the phial between the bars. It broke as he did
so, and there was a strong smell of bitter almonds. She had risen
from her knees. She followed him, and again laid that hand upon his
arm--that soft, fair hand, of whose beauty he was wont to be so
proud. It trembled violently now; but as if impelled with unwonted
courage, and an energy inspired by the occasion, she ventured upon that
which it was long since anyone ever had presumed to offer to Julian
Winstanley--upon a plain-spoken remonstrance.
"Papa," she said, "promise me that you will never--never--never
again----"
"Do what?"
"Make an attempt upon your life--if I must speak out," she said, with a
spirit that astonished him.
"Attempt my life? What should I attempt my life for?" said he, and
he glanced round the scene of luxury which surrounded him. He was
continuing, in a tone of irony--but it would not do. He sank upon a
sofa, and covering his face with his hands, groaned--"Yes--yes, Ella!
all you say is true. I am a wretch who is unworthy to--and more--who
_will_ not live." He burst forth at last with a loud voice; and his
hands falling from his face, displayed a countenance dark with a sort
of resolute despair. "No--no--no!--death, death!--annihilation--and
forgetfulness! Why did you come in to interrupt me, girl?" he added,
roughly seizing her by the arm.
"Because--I know not--something--Oh! it was the good God, surely, who
impelled me," she cried, bursting into tears. "Oh, papa! papa! Do not!
do not! Think of us all--your girls--Cle. and I. You used to love us,
papa----"
"Do you know what has happened?"
"Yes--no. I believe you have lost a great deal of money at cards."
"Cards--was it? Let it be. It may as well be cards. Yes, child, I
_have_ lost a large sum of money at cards--and more," he added, setting
his teeth, and speaking in a sort of hissing whisper--"more than I can
exactly pay."
"Oh, papa! don't say so. Consider--only look round you. Surely you have
the means to pay! We can sell--we can make any sacrifice--any sacrifice
on earth to pay. Only think, there are all these things. There is all
the plate--my mother's diamonds--there is----"
He let her run on a little while; then, in a cool, almost mocking tone,
he said--
"I have given a bill of sale for all that, long ago."
"A bill of sale! What is a bill of sale?"
"Well! It's a thing which passes one man's property into the hands of
another man, to make what he can of it. And the poor dupe who took my
bill of sale, took it for twice as much as the things would really
bring; but the rascal thought he had no alternative. I was a fool to
give it to him, for the dice were loaded. If it were the last word I
had to speak, I would say it--the dice were loaded----"
"But--but----"
"What! you want to hear all about it, do you? Well it's a bad business.
I thought I had a right to a run of luck--after all my ill fortune. I
calculated the chances; they were overwhelmingly in my favor. I staked
my zero against another man's thousands--never mind how many--and I
lost, and have only my zero to offer in payment. That is to say, my
note of hand; and how much do you think that is worth, my girl? I would
rather--I would rather," he added, passionately, changing his tone of
levity for one of the bitterest despair--"I would rather be dead--dead,
dead--than----"
"Oh, papa! papa! say it not! say it not! It is real. Such things are
not mere words. They are real, father, father!--Die! You must not die."
"I have little cause to wish to die," he said, relapsing again into a
sort of gloomy carelessness; "so that I could see any other way out of
it. To be sure, one might run--one might play the part of a cowardly,
dishonorable rascal, and run for it, Ella, if you like that better.
Between suicide and the escapade of a defaulter, there is not much to
choose; but I will do as you like."
"I would not willingly choose your dishonor," said she, shuddering;
"but between the dishonor of the one course or the other, there seems
little to choose. Only--only--if you lived, in time you might be able
to pay. Men have lived, and labored, until they have paid all."
"Live and labor--very like me! Live, and labor, until I have paid
all--extremely like me! Lower a mountain by spadefuls."
"Even spadefuls," she said; her understanding and her heart seemed
both suddenly ripened in this fearful extremity--"even spadefuls at
a time have done something--have lowered mountains, where there was
determination and perseverance.
"But suppose there was neither. Suppose there was neither courage, nor
goodness, nor determination, nor perseverance. Suppose the man had
lived a life of indolent self-indulgence, until, squeeze him as you
would, there was not one drop of virtue left in him. Crush him, as fate
is crushing me at this moment; and I tell you, you will get nothing out
of him. Nothing--nothing. He is more worthless than the most degraded
beast. Better to die as a beast, and go where the beasts go."
She turned ghastly pale at this terrible speech--but, "No," she
faltered out--"no--no!"
"You will not have me die, then?" he said, pursuing the same heartless
tone; but it was forced, if that were any excuse for him. "Then you
prefer the other scheme? I thought, he went on, "to have supped with
Pluto to-night; but you prefer that it should be on board an American
steamer."
"I do," she gasped, rather than uttered.
"You do--you are sure you do?" said he, suddenly assuming a tone of
greater seriousness. "You wish, Ella, to preserve this worthless life?
Have you considered at what expense?"
"Expense! How! Who could think of that?" she answered.
"Oh! not the expense of money, child--at the expense of the little
thing called 'honor.' Listen to me, Ella,"--and again he took her arm,
and turned her poor distracted face, to his. "You see I am ready to
die--at least, was ready to die--but I have no wish to die. Worthless
as this wretched life of mine it, it has its excitements, and its
enjoyments, to me. When I made up my mind to end it, I assure you,
child, I did the one only generous thing I ever was guilty of in my
life; for I did it for you girls' sakes, as much or more than for my
own. Suicide, some think a wicked thing--I don't. How I got my life, I
don't know; the power of getting rid of it is mine, and I hold myself
at liberty to make use of it or not, at my own good pleasure. As for
my ever living to pay my debt, it's folly to talk of it. I have not,
and never shall acquire, the means. I have neither the virtue nor the
industry. I tell you, I am utterly good for nothing. I am a rascal--a
scoundrel, and a despicable knave. I played for a large sum--meaning to
take it if I won it--and not being able to pay, I lost it--and that, I
have still sense of honor enough left to call a rascally proceeding.
Now there is one way, and one way only, of cancelling all this in the
eye of the world. When a man destroys himself, the world is sorry for
him--half inclined to forgive him--to say the least of it, absolves
his family. But--if he turn tail--and sneak away to America, and has
so little sense"--he went on, passionately and earnestly--"of all that
is noble, and faithful, and honorable, that he can bear to drag on a
disgraced, contemptible existence, like a mean, pitiful, cowardly,
selfish wretch, as he is--why, then--then--he is utterly blasted,
and blackened over with infamy! Nobody feels for him, nobody pities
him--the world speaks out, and curses the rascal as heartily as he
deserves--and all his family perish with him. Now, Ella, choose which
you will."
"I choose America," she said with firmness.
"And how am I to got to America? and how am I to live there when I am
there? To be sure, there are your mother's diamonds," he added.
"Those are included in the bill of sale. Did you not say so?" she asked.
"Well, perhaps I did. But if a man is to live, he must have something
to live upon. If he is to take flight, he must have wings to fly with."
"I will provide both."
"You will?"
"I am of age. What I have--which was not your gift--is at least my own.
Lionel has been generous; I have the means to pay your passage."
"Aye, aye--Lionel! But afterwards, how am I to live? He will not
like--no man would like--to have to maintain a wife's father, and that
man a defaulter too. You should think of that, Ella."
"I do! I will never ask him."
"Then who is to maintain me? I tell you, I shall never manage to do it
myself."
"I will."
"My poor child!" he cried--one short touch of nature had reached him at
last--"what are you talking of?"
"I hope, and believe, that I shall be able to do it."
"I stood with my household gods shattered around me," is the energetic
expression of that erring man, who had brought the fell catastrophe
upon himself.
And so stood Ella now--in the centre of her own sitting-room, like some
noble figure of ruin and despair; yet with a light, the light divine,
kindling in an eye cast upward.
Yes! all her household gods--all the idols she had too dearly loved
and cherished, were shattered around her, and she felt that she stood
alone, to confront the dreadful fate which had involved all she loved.
What a spectacle presented itself to her imagination, as drearily she
looked round! On one side, defaced and disfigured, soiled, degraded,
was the once beautiful and animated figure of her father,--the man so
brilliant, and to her so splendid a specimen of what human nature, in
the full affluence of nature's finest gifts, might be. Upon another
side her lover!--her husband! who was to have been her heart's best
treasure! who never was to be hers now. No! upon that her high spirit
had at once resolved; never. Impoverished and degraded, as she felt
herself to be, never would she be Lionel's wife. The name which would,
in a few hours' time, be blackened by irremediable dishonor, should
never be linked to his. One swell of tender feeling, and it was over!
All that is wrong, and all that is right, in woman's pride, had risen
in arms at once against this.
The last figure that presented itself, was that of her delicate and
gentle sister. But here there was comfort. Clementina was of a most
frail and susceptible temperament, and eminently formed to suffer
severely from adverse external circumstances; but she had a true and
faithful heart; and if to Ella she would be obliged to cling for
support, she would give consolation in return.
Ella looked upward--she looked up to God!
That holy name was not a stranger to her lips. It had been once, until
the child of charity had taught the rich man's daughter some little
knowledge of it. But such ideas had never been thoroughly realized by
her mind; and now, when in the extremity of her destitution, she looked
up--when, "out of the depths she cried unto Him,"--alas! He seemed so
far, far off, and her distresses were so terribly near!
Yet even then, imperfect as all was, a beginning was made. The thick
darkness of her soul seemed a little broken,--communion with the
better and higher world was at least begun. There was a light--dim
and shadowy--but still a light. There was a strength, vacillating and
uncertain, but still a strength, coming over her soul.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
And now that wretched man, broken with disease and misery, sat there,
with the lady, who, patient and pitying even to the worst of her
fellow-creatures, had been moved by the sincerity of his distress. The
extremity of his misery had raised so much compassion in her heart, as
to overcome the resentment and indignation which she had at first felt,
on recognizing him.
He had entreated her to tell him every thing she knew of the fate of
one whom he had that morning followed to the grave. For wretched as
was his attire, defiled with dirt, and worn with travel, he had left
the house, and had followed, a tearless, but heartbroken mourner, the
simple procession which attended the once lovely and glorious creature
whom he had called daughter to her resting-place.
He had stood by, at her funeral, whilst ill-taught children stared and
scoffed, until the busy mercenaries had pushed and elbowed him aside.
He had seen his best and loveliest one consigned, ashes to ashes, dust
to dust; he had waited quietly until all had dispersed, and every one
was gone home. He had no home--and he yet stood by, and watched the
sexton completing his work and cheerfully whistling as he proceeded
with it.
For it was now a gleaming bright day, and the sun had burst forth,
and beamed upon the lofty tower of the church-steeple. It gilded the
church-vane and weathercock; it sparkled from the windows of the houses
around the graveyard; it glistened on the lowly graves.
Cheerfulness was around him, for the bright sun of heaven cheers and
ennobles every thing upon which his beams fall. And there was a soft
wind, too, which stirred among the leaves of a few poplars, that stood
hard by, whispering sweet secrets of nature, even in that dismal spot.
He stood there, motionless and tearless, until the sexton had finished
his task, had shouldered his spade, and, still whistling, had walked
away. Then he sat down upon the little mound, and hid his face in his
hands. He sat there for some time--for a long, long time--and then
slowly arose, and with feeble and uncertain steps retraced the way he
had come, and found himself at the door of the handsome house, whence
he had followed the funeral in the morning.
He made his way to the lady, who happened to be still there, and who
now (as I have said), indignation having yielded to compassion, was
prepared to satisfy the yearning anxiety he had expressed to hear all
she could tell him of his once proud and beautiful child.
"You know where you are, and what I am, and what I and the other ladies
whom you have seen with me employ ourselves upon when we come here."
"No," he said, looking round. "It never struck me to inquire, or even
to reflect upon what I saw."
"This house is a kind of hospital."
He started--and a faint flush passed over his face.
"Yes," he said, "it was natural--as things had gone on--a consequence
inevitable. Then she died at last in the hospital?"
"Not exactly that--as you would interpret the word. This house is,
indeed, a species of hospital; it is intended as a refuge for the
sick and dying, who have nowhere else to go; but it does not exactly
resemble an ordinary hospital. In the first place, the services
performed are not altogether gratuitous; in the second, every
patient has a room to herself. We are only women, except the medical
attendants: and we admit none but women--and those women of a higher
class, of gentle breeding, and refined habits, who have fallen into
poverty, and yet who have not been hardened in their sensations by
habits, so as that the edge of privation is blunted; or what, perhaps,
is still more difficult to bear, that painful sense of publicity
unfelt, which renders shelter in an ordinary hospital a source of
suffering to them--which--God be thanked!--it does not necessarily
prove to those for whom such places of refuge were intended. This house
would have been more justly called an asylum than a hospital, for it is
intended as a shelter for the sick and destitute; but yet those who are
received into it are expected to contribute to their own support."
He made no answer to this explanation. After all, it, interested
him little now to know that his Ella had not been a mere object of
the charity which is extended to paupers. His pride had died within
him, for his nature had been much changed; but, only as such natures
change. His faults had withered away, but no good qualities seemed as
yet to burst forth to flourish in their stead. The soul had been so
utterly ruined and devastated, the portion of living waters had been so
completely dried up, that he seemed merely to have lost the inclination
to do wrong--that was all.
"We are a small party of friends," the lady went on; "some of us in the
heyday of prosperity, but who, amid all the triumphs of youth, wealth,
and beauty, have not quite forgotten the poor, the sick, and the
miserable: others, who, like myself, are fallen into the yellow leaf of
life--whose years cannot of necessity be many--may be very few--and who
would fain do something in the great vineyard before they are called
away. It is our practice for some of us to visit this place every day,
to see our patients, attend to their wants and comforts, and, where it
is desired, administer by our conversation such helps and solace as
we can. I come here pretty often, for I am not one who is very much
occupied upon this earth; and, as I love to sit with the sufferers, and
am more aged than the majority of them, they seem to lean upon me a
good deal. They love to have me with them; and many of the younger ones
have treated me with a confidence, which has excited, I can scarcely
say whether more satisfaction or pain."
He still spoke not, but listened with deep attention.
"A few months ago," she continued, "the matron of the establishment
came to me one morning, and said that a young lady had been received
here some days ago, whom she wished me very much to visit. I had
but the day before returned from an excursion into the country, and
had been absent from my post about a fortnight. I asked, at whose
recommendation the patient had been received. She said--that of Lady
R., but that Lady R. knew nothing about her. It was at the earnest
solicitation of the wife of the baker who supplied her family with
bread, that Lady R. had given the order; the woman, who was a very
plain sort of person, but highly respectable in her way, having assured
her that it was a case of the most urgent necessity: that the young
lady was utterly penniless and destitute, and in an almost hopeless
state of health. She had brought on a decline by over-exertion to
maintain a sick sister, and pay some debts of that sister's, which she
thought herself bound in honor to discharge--'and other expenses,' she
added, somewhat mysteriously,--promising that she would advance the
required guinea a week; for, as for the young lady, she did not believe
that she had five shillings left in the world."
He struck his hand flat at the top of his head, and held it there,
leaning his elbow upon the table, so that his arm covered in part
his face, which was painfully contracted; but he neither spoke, nor
groaned, nor even sighed.
"I went up to the young lady's room immediately. Our rooms are each
provided with a single bed, a sofa, an easy chair, a table, and
such other requisites as make a chamber at once a bedroom and a
sitting-room.
"The matron knocked gently at the door; but no one answered it; she
therefore gently turned the handle of the lock, and we went in.
"The window was open. Hers looked upon those green trees you see at
the back of the house, and the fresh air came pleasantly in: but it
seemed unheeded by the sufferer. She was clothed in a long white
sleeping-gown. One arm was thrown above her head; her hair had gotten
from her comb, and fell in waves and curls of the utmost beauty and
luxuriance almost to her feet. She lay with her face upward, resting
upon the back of her head, almost as motionless as a corpse: her
features were fixed; her eyes rested upon the top of the bed. She
seemed lost in thought. Never in my life have I seen any thing so
supremely beautiful."
"Ella--Ella!" he just muttered.
"When we approached the side of the bed, she first perceived us, gave
a little start, glanced at the matron, and then, with a look of rather
displeased surprise at me--
"'I beg your pardon if I intrude upon you,' I said. 'Mrs. Penrose asked
me to pay you a visit. I am but just returned from the country. I spend
a good deal of my time when in town with the sick ladies here, and they
seem to like to have me; but if you do not I will go away directly.'
"She made an impatient and half-contemptuous motion of the head as
I used the words 'sick ladies;' but she fixed her large, lustrous
eyes upon me as I went on speaking--saying nothing, however, when I
concluded, but keeping those large dark eyes fixed upon my face.
"'Shall I go?' I said, after a little time thus spent.
"She made a gesture as if to stop me--but without moving those large
mournful eyes, in which I could see that tears were slowly gathering.
"Mrs. Penrose had already left the room. I said no more; but took a
chair, sat down by the bedside, and laid mine upon her thin, fevered,
but most exquisitely-formed hand.
"I gave a gentle, gentle pressure; it was faintly, very faintly
returned; and then the tears, which had so slowly gathered into her
eyes, fell in a few large drops over her faded cheeks.
"'This is lonely, desolate work, do what we will,' I said, as a sort
of answer to these few large tears, falling so quietly and still, and
without convulsion of features--the tears of a strong but softened
mind. 'To be sick, and without familiar faces--to be sick and among
strangers--is a sorrowful, sorrowful thing--but we do our best.'
"'O, you are good--very good,' she said.
"'There is nothing _I_ feel so much myself as this destitution of
the heart; solitude in sickness is to me almost more than I can
bear; and, therefore, it is, perhaps, that I am almost troublesome
in offering my society to those here who have not many friends and
visitors--especially to the young. I can bear solitude myself better
now, badly as I do bear it, than when I was young. Society seems, to
the young, like the vital air upon which they exist.'
"'Yes, perhaps so,' she said, after musing a little--'yes. So long
as there was one near me whom I loved, I could get on--better or
worse--but I could get on. But she is gone. Others whom I have loved
are far--far away. The solitude of the heart! yes, that kills one at
last.'
"'Then will you try to make a friend of me? A new friend can never be
like an old friend. Yet, when the old wine is drawn down to the dregs,
we accept the new, although we still say the old is better.'
"'How very kindly you speak to me! You have none of the pride of
compassion,' she said, fixing her lovely eyes, filled with an earnest,
intelligent expression, full upon mine. 'You will not humble me, whilst
you serve me.'
"'Humble you! My dear young lady! That, I hope, indeed, would be far
from me--from every one of us.'
"'I dare say so--as you say it. I have seen none of the ladies, only
the matron, Mrs. Penrose, and a friend of mine, to whom I owe much;
but they are both so inferior to myself in habits and education, that
I don't think they could humble me if they tried. The insolence of my
inferiors, I can defy--the condescensions of my superiors, are what I
dread.'
"I saw in this little speech something that opened to me, as I thought,
one side of her character. All the notice of it, however, which I took,
was to say, 'We must not exact too much from each other. A person may
have a very single-hearted and sincere desire to serve us, and yet be
somewhat awkward in conferring benefits. We must not be unreasonable.
Where people do their best to be kind, we must accept the will for the
deed, and besides....'
"'You mean to say that benefits may be _accepted_ ungraciously,'--and
she laid her hand upon mine, and pressed it with some fervor. Yes, that
is true. We may, in the pride of our unsubdued and unregulated hearts,
be captious, exacting and unjust. We may be very, very ungrateful.'
"Do I tire you with relating these things?" said the lady, breaking
off, and addressing the fallen man. "Shall I pass on to others? Yet
there are few events to relate. The history of this life of a few
months is comprised in conversations. I thought you would probably like
to hear them.
"I _do_ like to hear them. I adjure you, solemnly, to omit nothing that
you can remember of them. She was a noble creature." And he burst forth
with a bitter cry.
"She _was_ a noble creature!
"I sat with her some time that day, and learned some little of her
history; but she was very reserved as to details and explanations. She
told me that she had once lived in great affluence; but that a sudden
reverse of fortune had ruined her father, who had been obliged to
quit the country; and that she and her sister had found it necessary
immediately to set about getting their own livelihood. Only one course
was open to either of them--that of becoming governesses in private
families, or teachers at schools. They had wished to adopt the latter
course, which would have enabled them to keep together, but had not
been able to provide themselves with situations; so they had been
compelled to separate.
"'My sister,' she said, 'took a situation in London; I was obliged to
accept one that offered in a distant county, so that we were entirely
parted; but in such cases one cannot choose. My dear Clementina's
accomplishments were such as the family in London wanted; mine suited
those who offered me the place in the country, or I would have
exchanged with her. But it was not to be. Things in this miserable
world are strangely ordered.'
"'For the _best_,' I said, 'when the issues are known.'
"'Who shall assure us of that? and when are their issues known?' she
asked, with some bitterness. 'It would need great faith when one
receives a heavy injury, to believe it was fraught with good, and well
intended.'
"'It would, indeed! Yet, we must have that faith. We ought to have
that faith in Him, the All-wise, Merciful, and Good. We should have
it,--should we not?--whatever appearances might be, in an earthly
friend of this description.'
"'Ah! but we see and know such a friend.'
"'We ought to _know_, though we cannot see, that other friend.'
"'Ah! well--it is so, I dare say. But, oh, there are moments in life
when the cruel blow is so real, and the consolation so illusory!'
"'Seems so real--seems so illusory! Ah! my dear young lady, have you
drank so deep of the cup of sorrow? And have you not found the great,
the only true reality, at the bottom?'
"She had loosed her hold of my hand, and turned her head coldly away,
as I uttered the last speech.
"I asked her why she did so.
"'Because you talk like all the rest. At ease yourselves, religious
faith is an easy matter to you. It is easy to give these every-day
religious consolations, when we have nothing else to give. But they are
things of a peculiar character. If the soul does not put them within
itself, none upon earth can bestow them. They are only given of God;
and it has not pleased Him to give them to me. No,' she went on, with
much emotion. 'If there be light in darkness, it shines not for me. If
out of the depths they call, and He listens, He has not listened to
me. My prayers have been vain, and I have wearied myself with offering
them. There was no help in them.'
"I was grieved and shocked to hear her speak thus. I, however, ventured
to urge my point a little further.
"'But you did find help, somewhere?'
"'Not such as I wanted; not health and strength to my poor darkened
spirit.'
"'And why? Because they sought it not in faith ...'
"'Ah! faith! but who can command this faith?'
"'Everybody.'
"'Everybody! If it has pleased God to darken our understandings so
that we do not know him at all, it may be as you say. But if we know
him--not to trust in him--_that_ worst of faith must be our own fault.'
"She was silent, and seemed to sink into a reverie, which I would not
disturb. At last she shook it off, and turning suddenly to me, said,
'Clementina had got nearer this truth than I had, or have. Yes, that
it was--that it must have been--which supported her in circumstances
far worse than mine. She was patient, composed, resigned, and, in spite
of her natural feebleness, showed a strength which I ever wanted. She
endured better than I do, when she lay low as I do now, and suffered
worse, far worse. How was it?'
"'My strength is made perfect in weakness'--'Is not that said?'
"Again she fixed her eyes with a searching, earnest expression upon
mine.
"'But, tell me,' I continued, 'how it fared with you? I fear badly.'
"'Perhaps you are not aware, Madam, how much strength, both of body and
spirit, it requires to make a governess.'
"'I think I am aware of it, in good measure.'
"'There seems nothing very onerous in the task of teaching children
during a certain number of hours every day, and living with them
during the rest. But those who have tried it alone know how irksome,
how exhausting is the wearisome routine of ungrateful labor. My
situation was tiresome enough. They were a family of high-spirited
children, as wild as the hills in which they had been bred, and whose
greatest pleasure was to torment their young governess; though I was
rather excited than depressed by our frequent struggles for mastery.
Then the mother, when she did interfere, was sensible and just; and
she supported me when she thought me right, through every thing. If
she disapproved, too, I could be hot and unreasonable in my turn,
and she gently told me of my fault in private, so as to never impair
my authority. She was a wise and excellent woman. A good mother,
and a true friend, even to her governess. But it was different with
Clementina. Shut up in London, with a family of cold-hearted, proud
children, already spoiled by the world, and never finding it possible
to satisfy an exacting mother, do what she would, the task was soon
too hard for her. The more languid her health and spirits became,
the feebler her voice, the paler her cheek, the greater was the
dissatisfaction of the lady whom she served. When the family doctor was
at last called in, he pronounced her to be in so critical a state of
health, that rest and change of air were indispensable. So she left,
with fifteen pounds--a half-year's salary.
"'Consumption had set in when I saw her. What was to become of her? We
knew of no such place as this, then.
"'The lady whom I served was kind and considerate. When I came to her
in tears, she bade me fly to my sister, and not return until I had
settled her somewhere in comfort. But where was that to be? We had not
a friend in the world except one. She had been our under nursery-maid.
She was now a baker's wife; but she had always loved us. She had such a
heart! And she did not fail us now.
"'She took my sister home, and insisted upon keeping her. We could not
allow this to be done without offering what compensation we could. My
sister's little purse was reserved for extraordinary expenses; and I
contrived out of my own salary to pay a little weekly stipend to our
good Matty. She would not have taken it; but she had a husband, and
upon this point we were resolved.'
"Here she paused, and raising her head from her pillow, rested it upon
her hand, and looked round the room with an expression of satisfaction
which it gave me great pleasure to see. The little apartment was
plainly furnished enough; but the walls were of a cheerful color, and
the whole furniture was scrupulously clean. The windows stood open,
looking upon a space in which a few green trees were growing. The scene
was more open, airy, and quiet than one can usually obtain in London.
The air came in fresh and pleasant; the green trees waved and bowed
their heads lovingly and soothingly.
"'It is not until we are sick that we know the value, that we feel
the necessity, of these things,' she began again. 'This I may venture
to say for us both. We had been cradled in luxury and elegancies,
surrounded by every thing that the most lavish expenditure could
bestow. We gave them all up without a sigh. So much unhappiness
had attended this unblest profusion, that it seemed almost a
relief--something like an emancipation--to have done with it, and
be restored at once to simplicity and nature. Whilst our health and
spirits lasted, we both of us took a pleasure in defying superfluity,
in being easy and content upon a pallet bed, and with a crust of
bread and a glass of water; but, oh! when sickness comes--deadly
sickness! The fever, and the languor, and, above all, the frightful
susceptibility to external influences. When upon the hard bed you
cannot sleep, though sleep is life to the exhausted frame. When
the coarse food you cannot touch--though your body is sinking for
want of nourishment--when the aching limbs get sore with the rugged
unyieldingness of that on which they lie--when you languish and sicken
for fresh air, and are shut up in a little close room in some back
street--when you want medicine and care, and can command no services at
all--or of the lowest and most inefficient description--then--O then!
we feel what it is to want--then we feel what it is to have such an
asylum prepared for us as this. Poor thing! she was not so fortunate as
I have been.'"
Here, the broken man who had until now sat listening in what might
almost be called a sullen attention, suddenly lifted up his head,
looked round the room where he sat, and through the large cheerful
window upon the branches of the trees and the blue unclouded sky; and,
suddenly, even his heart seemed reached.
He rose from his chair, he sat down again, he looked conscious, uneasy,
abashed. It was so long since he had felt or expressed any grateful
or amiable sentiment, that he was almost ashamed of what he now
experienced, as if it had been a weakness.
"Pray have the kindness to go on," he said at last.
"It was some days before I learned much more of the history of my
poor young invalid, but one day when I came to see her, I found a
very respectable looking woman, though evidently not belonging to the
higher class, sitting with her. She was a person whose appearance
would have been almost repulsive from the deep injuries her face had
received--burned when a child, I believe--if it had not been for
the sense and goodness that pervaded her expression. Her eyes were
singularly intelligent, sweet, and kind.
"I found she was the wife of the baker--she, who had once been
nursery-maid in your family. The only friend the poor young creature
seemed to have left in the world, and the only person from whom she
could bear, as it afterwards appeared, to receive an obligation. This
excellent person it was, who advanced the guinea a-week, which the laws
of the institution required should be contributed by a patient.
"When she took her leave I followed her, to inquire further particulars
about my patient. She then told me, that the sister had died about
three years before, leaving a heavy debt to be discharged by the one
remaining; consisting of her funeral expenses, which were considerable,
though every thing was conducted with all the simplicity compatible
with decency; and of the charges of the medical man who had attended
her: a low unprincipled person, who had sent in an enormous bill,
which there were no means of checking, and which, nevertheless, the
high-spirited sister resolved to pay. But the first thing she did, was
to insure her own life for a certain sum, so as to guard against the
burden under which she herself labored, being in its turn imposed upon
others.
"'So, madam,' said the good Mrs. Lacy, with simplicity, 'you must not
think that the guinea a-week is any thing more than an advance on our
part--there will be money enough to repay us--or my dear Miss Ella
would never, never have taken it. She would die in the street first,
she has such a noble spirit of her own. She told me to provide for her
sister's debts,--she had made an arrangement with a publisher to be a
regular contributor to a certain periodical,--she had likewise produced
a few rather popular novels. To effect this she had indeed labored
night and day,--the day with her pupils, half the night with her pen.
She was strong, but human nature could not support this long; and yet
labor as she did, she proceeded slowly in clearing away the debt. I
cannot quite account for that,' said Mrs. Lacy, 'she dressed plainly,
she allowed herself no expense, she made no savings, she paid the
debt very slowly by small instalments, yet she worked herself into a
decline. There seemed to be some hidden, insatiable call for money....'"
If the lady who was recounting all this, had looked at her listener at
that moment, she would have been moved, little as she liked him. A wild
horror took possession of his countenance--his lips became livid--his
cheek ghastly--he muttered a few inarticulate words between his teeth.
But she was occupied with her own reflections, and noticed him not.
"This could not go on for ever," said the lady, presently. "She was
obliged to throw up her situation; soon afterwards the possibility of
writing left her; and she was brought here, where I found her."
"And that it was--that it was, then!" cried the wretched man. 'O Ella,
my child!--my child! I was living, in indolence and indifference, upon
her hard-earned labors! I was eating into her life! And when the supply
ceased, I--I never knew what it was to have a heart!--I thought she was
tired of ministering to her father's wants, and I came to England to
upbraid her!"
"It was too late. She was gone where the wicked cease from troubling,
and where the weary are at rest," said the lady.
"You need not--you need not--my heart is hard, but the dagger has
pierced it at last. You need not drive in the steel: it has done its
work," he rather gasped than said.
The lady felt that she had been too severe. His apparent insensibility
had, it is true, irritated her almost beyond bearing, after all he had
done, and after all that had been suffered for his sake.
"I am sorry if I give you pain. I ought to be sorry for you, not angry."
"Did she never mention me?" he asked, in a tone of agony. "And there
was another, on whom her young heart doted, only too fondly. Did she
never speak of either of us?"
"She spoke of both."
"Tell me what she said."
The lady hesitated.
"I pray tell me--I can bear it."
"I am afraid I have given you too much pain already. It is over now.
Let it be over. Go home; and may God give you grace at the eleventh
hour, and bring you and yours together again at last!" she said
fervently, and the tears starting in her eyes.
"I have no home but one; and to that I shall shortly go. But let me
not depart tormented with a yearning desire to hear all. Tell me; I
ask it of you as a favor. What was her state of mind as regarded her
mother--her father--and her lover?"
"God gave her grace to find him at last. The darkness and the
doubts that had distressed her, gradually disappeared. That grace
took possession of her heart which the world can neither give nor
understand; and all was hope and tranquillity at the last hour.
"As she grew worse, her spirit became more and more composed. She told
me so one day. Then she asked me whether I thought she could recover.
"I was silent.
"She turned pale. Her lips moved as she said, 'Do I understand your
silence rightly?'
"'I am afraid you do.'
"She was silent herself for a short time; then she said,
"'And so young!'
"'It is not for us to know the times and seasons which the Father hath
kept in his own power,' said I.
"'But must I--must I die? I am not ashamed to own it,--I did so wish to
live. Did you never hear that I had a father living?' she asked in so
low a voice, that it was almost a whisper.
"'Yes,' I answered.
"'Then, you have heard his most unhappy history?'
"'Most of it, I believe, I have.'
"'He seems to you, I fear, a very--very erring man.'
"I was silent.
"'There is good in him still,' she cried; 'believe it or not who may,
there is good in him still.'
"And now her tears began to flow fast, as she went on,
"'The will of God be done! The will of God be done! But if it had been
His pleasure, I hoped to have lived! to have had that father home; to
have joined our two desolate hearts together; to have brought him to
the knowledge of One whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light. O,
was that wish wrong, that it was not granted! O, my father! who shall
seek you out now!'
"'Remember,' I said, gently, 'we are in the hands of One, wiser and
more merciful than ourselves. He would spare, surely, where we would
spare, if it were good it should be so. If means would avail, He
would provide the means. His work will not stand still because the
instruments (as we regard things) seem taken away. Your death, dear
girl, may do more for your father's soul than your life could ever have
done.'"
And now, he bowed his head--humbly--and he covered his face with his
hands, and the tears ran through his fingers.
"Thus," the lady went on, "I comforted her, as I could; and she died:
with her last breath commending her father to the mercy of God.
"Her lover was dear--but not dearer than her father. She told me that
history one day. How she had loved; how devotedly, how passionately.
But that when her name was disgraced, she had resolved never to unite
it with his. She had withdrawn herself; she had done it in a way such
as she believed would displease him. 'I thought he would feel it less
if he were angry,' she said. 'I often wished in my desolation _I_ could
feel angry.' She told me his name; and I promised to make inquiries. I
had fortunately the opportunity. I had the pleasure to tell her, that
he had made the greatest efforts to find her out, but in vain; that
he had remained unmarried and constant to her memory: that what had
happened had given a new turn to his character. Habits of dissipation,
which had been gradually acquiring power over him, had been entirely
broken through. He had accepted an office in a distant colony, where he
was leading a most useful and meritorious life. Never shall I forget
the glow of joy that illuminated her face when I told her so. She
looked already as if she had entered into the higher and more glorious
existence!
"'I shall not see him again,' said she; 'but you will write to him
and tell him all. You will say that I died true and blest, because he
was what he was; and that I bade him a fond adieu, until we should
meet again in a better world. For, O! we shall meet again; I have a
testimony within, which shall not deceive me!'
"She then reverted to her father.
"'He will come back,' she said; 'you will see that he will come back,
and he will inquire what is become of me--why his child has forgotten
him and is silent. It will be the silence and forgetfulness of the
grave. Perhaps he will come back as he went; his heart yet unchanged:
defying and despairing. Tell him _not_--be patient, with him, good
kind friend, for my sake. There is good in him:--good he knows not of,
himself; that nobody knows of, but his loving child, and the God who
made him--weak and erring as he is. Tell him, he must no more be weak
and erring; tell him there is forgiveness for all who will return at
last, but that forgiveness supposes newness of life. Tell him--"
The sentence was unfinished by the lady, for he who listened fell
prostrate on his face upon the floor.
They raised him up; but his heart seemed broken. He neither moved
nor spoke. Life, however, was not extinct; for in this condition he
remained many days.
They could not keep him where he was, for this benevolent institution
was strictly devoted to women of the more refined orders. He was
carried to a Hospital. There was nowhere else to carry him.
Seven days he lay without speaking; but not absolutely senseless. The
spirit within him was at work. In his worst days he had never wanted
energy. His heart was ever strong for good or for bad. What passed
within him, in those seven days, was between his soul and the Highest.
He came out of his death-trance an altered creature.
The once handsome, dashing, profane, luxurious Julian Winstanley,
looked now a very old, old man. Quite gray, very thin, and stooping
much. From that time, he continued to earn his bread honestly, as
an attendant in the very hospital where he had been recovered. He
had a little room to himself, and it was filled with certain simple
treasures, hallowed by his recollections.
His patient and tender attendance upon the sick, his assiduous
discharge of all his duties, was beyond praise.
One day, a man who had risen to a very high post in one of our
colonies, came to visit him. The two were long together. When, they
parted, it was evident that both had wept much.
The old man, after that, faded rapidly. One morning they found him
dead in bed. His hands were clasped together, as if he had departed in
the act of prayer. He lies buried in a neighboring churchyard, under a
simple mound of earth, such as covers the humblest and the poorest.
He had left behind him a scrap of paper, earnestly imploring that so it
might be. So it was. May God forgive us all!
MY NOVEL: OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[7]
BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.
BOOK VIII.--INITIAL CHAPTER.--THE ABUSE OF INTELLECT.
There is at present so vehement a flourish of trumpets, and so
prodigious a roll of the drum, whenever we are called upon to throw
up our hats, and cry "Huzza" to the "March of Enlightenment," that,
out of that very spirit of contradiction natural to all rational
animals, one is tempted to stop one's ears, and say, "Gently, gently;
LIGHT is noiseless; how comes 'Enlightenment' to make such a clatter?
Meanwhile if it be not impertinent, pray, where is enlightenment
marching to?" Ask that question of any six of the loudest bawlers
in the procession, and I'll wager ten-pence to California that you
get six very unsatisfactory answers. One respectable gentleman, who,
to our great astonishment, insists upon calling himself a "slave,"
but has a remarkably free way of expressing his opinions, will
reply--"Enlightenment is marching towards the nine points of the
Charter." Another with his hair _à la jeune France_, who has taken a
fancy to his friend's wife, and is rather embarrassed with his own,
asserts that Enlightenment is proceeding towards the Rights of Women,
the reign of Social Love, and the annihilation of Tyrannical Prejudice.
A third, who has the air of a man well to do in the middle class, more
modest in his hopes, because he neither wishes to have his head broken
by his errand-boy, nor his wife carried off to an Agapemone by his
apprentice, does not take Enlightenment a step farther than a siege
on Debrett, and a cannonade on the Budget. Illiberal man! the march
that he swells will soon trample _him_ under foot. No one fares so ill
in a crowd, as the man who is wedged in the middle. A fourth, looking
wild and dreamy, as if he had come out of the cave of Trophonius, and
who is a mesmerizer and a mystic, thinks Enlightenment is in full
career towards the good old days of alchemists and necromancers. A
fifth, whom one might take for a Quaker, asserts that the march of
Enlightenment is a crusade for universal philanthropy, vegetable diet,
and the perpetuation of peace, by means of speeches, which certainly
do produce a very contrary effect from the Philippics of Demosthenes!
The sixth--(good fellow, without a rag on his back)--does not care a
straw where the march goes. He can't be worse off than he is; and it
is quite immaterial to him whether he goes to the dog-star above, or
the bottomless pit below. I say nothing, however, against the march,
while we take it altogether. Whatever happens, one is in good company;
and though I am somewhat indolent by nature, and would rather stay at
home with Locke and Burke, (dull dogs though they were,) than have my
thoughts set off helter-skelter with those cursed trumpets and drums,
blown and dub-a-dubbed by fellows that I vow to heaven I would not
trust with a five-pound note--still, if I must march, I must; and so
deuce take the hindmost. But when it comes to individual marchers upon
their own account--privateers and condottieri of Enlightenment--who
have filled their pockets with lucifer-matches, and have a sublime
contempt for their neighbours' barns and hay-ricks, I don't see why I
should throw myself into the seventh heaven of admiration and ecstasy.
[7] Continued from page 550.
If those who are eternally rhapsodizing on the celestial blessings
that are to follow Enlightenment, Universal Knowledge, and so forth,
would just take their eyes out of their pockets, and look about
them, I would respectfully inquire if they have never met any very
knowing and enlightened gentleman, whose acquaintance is by no means
desirable. If not, they are monstrous lucky. Every man must judge by
his own experience; and the worst rogues I have ever encountered were
amazingly well-informed, clever fellows! From dunderheads and dunces
we can protect ourselves; but from your sharp-witted gentleman, all
enlightenment and no prejudice, we have but to cry, "Heaven defend us!"
It is true, that the rogue (let him be ever so enlightened) usually
comes to no good himself, (though not before he has done harm enough to
his neighbors.) But that only shows that the world wants something else
in those it rewards, besides intelligence _per se_ and in the abstract;
and is much too old a world to allow any Jack Horner to pick out its
plums for his own personal gratification. Hence a man of very moderate
intelligence, who believes in God, suffers his heart to beat with human
sympathies, and keeps his eyes off your strong-box, will perhaps gain a
vast deal more power than knowledge ever gives to a rogue.
Wherefore, though I anticipate an outcry against me on the part of the
blockheads, who, strange to say, are the most credulous idolaters of
enlightenment, and, if knowledge were power, would rot on a dunghill;
yet, nevertheless, I think all really enlightened men will agree with
me, that when one falls in with detached sharpshooters from the general
march of enlightenment, it is no reason to make ourselves a target,
because enlightenment has furnished them with a gun. It has, doubtless,
been already remarked by the judicious reader, that of the numerous
characters introduced into this work, the larger portion belong to that
species which we call INTELLECTUAL--that through them are analyzed
and developed human intellect, in various forms and directions. So
that this History, rightly considered, is a kind of humble, familiar
Epic, or, if you prefer it, a long Serio-Comedy, upon the varieties of
English Life in this our Century, set in movement by the intelligences
most prevalent. And where more ordinary and less refined types of
the species round and complete the survey of our passing generation,
they will often suggest, by contrast, the deficiencies which mere
intellectual culture leaves in the human being. Certainly I have no
spite against intellect and enlightenment. Heaven forbid I should be
such a Goth. I am only the advocate for common sense and fair play. I
don't think an able man necessarily an angel; but I think if his heart
match his head, and both proceed in the Great March under the divine
Oriflamme, he goes as near to the angel as humanity will permit; if
not, if he has but a penn'orth of heart to a pound of brains, I say,
"_Bon jour, mon ange?_ I see not the starry upward wings, but the
grovelling cloven-hoof." I'd rather be obfuscated by the Squire of
Hazeldean, than enlightened by Randal Leslie. Every man to his taste.
But intellect itself (not in the philosophical, but the ordinary sense
of the term) is rarely, if ever, one completed harmonious agency; it is
not one faculty, but a compound of many, some of which are often at war
with each other, and mar the concord of the whole. Few of us but have
some predominant faculty, in itself a strength; but which (usurping
unseasonably dominion over the rest) shares the lot of all tyranny,
however brilliant, and leaves the empire weak against disaffection
within, and invasion from without. Hence intellect maybe perverted
in a man of evil disposition, and sometimes merely wasted in a man
of excellent impulses, for want of the necessary discipline, or of a
strong ruling motive. I doubt if there be one person in the world, who
has attained a high reputation for talent, who has not met somebody
much cleverer than himself, which said somebody has never obtained any
reputation at all! Men, like Audley Egerton, are constantly seen in the
great positions of life; while men, like Harley l'Estrange, who could
have beaten them hollow in any thing equally striven for by both, float
away down the stream, and, unless some sudden stimulant arouse the
dreamy energies, vanish out of sight into silent graves. If Hamlet and
Polonius were living now, Polonius would have a much better chance of
being Chancellor of the Exchequer, though Hamlet would unquestionably
be a much more intellectual character. What would become of Hamlet?
Heaven knows! Dr. Arnold said, from his experience of a school, that
the difference between one man and another was not mere ability--it was
energy. There is a great deal of truth in that saying.
Submitting these hints to the judgment and penetration of the
sagacious, I enter on the fresh division of this work, and see
already Randal Leslie gnawing his lip on the back ground. The German
poet observes, that the Cow of Isis is to some the divine symbol of
knowledge, to others but the milch cow, only regarded for the pounds of
butter she will yield. O tendency of our age, to look on Isis as the
milch cow! O prostitution of the grandest desires to the basest uses!
Gaze on the goddess, Randal Leslie, and get ready thy churn and thy
scales. Let us see what the butter will fetch in the market.
CHAPTER II.
A new reign has commenced. There has been a general election; the
unpopularity of the Administration has been apparent at the hustings.
Audley Egerton, hitherto returned by vast majorities, has barely
escaped defeat--thanks to a majority of five. The expenses of his
election are said to have been prodigious. "But who can stand against
such wealth as Egerton's--no doubt backed, too, by the Treasury purse?"
said the defeated candidate. It is towards the close of October; London
is already full; Parliament will meet in less than a fortnight.
In one of the principal apartments of that hotel in which foreigners
may discover what is meant by English comfort, and the price which
foreigners must pay for it, there sat two persons, side by side,
engaged in close conversation. The one was a female, in whose pale
clear complexion and raven hair--in whose eyes, vivid with a power
of expression rarely bestowed on the beauties of the north, we
recognize Beatrice, Marchesa di Negra. Undeniably handsome as was
the Italian lady, her companion, though a man, and far advanced
into middle age, was yet more remarkable for personal advantages.
There was a strong family likeness between the two; but there was
also a striking contrast in air, manner, and all that stamps on the
physiognomy the idiosyncrasies of character. There was something
of gravity, of earnestness and passion, in Beatrice's countenance
when carefully examined; her smile at times might be false, but it
was rarely ironical, never cynical. Her gestures, though graceful,
were unrestrained and frequent. You could see she was a daughter of
the south. Her companion, on the contrary, preserved on the fair
smooth face, to which years had given scarcely a line or wrinkle,
something that might have passed, at first glance for the levity and
thoughtlessness of a gay and youthful nature; but the smile, though
exquisitely polished, took at times the derision of a sneer. In his
manners he was as composed and as free from gesture as an Englishman.
His hair was of that red brown with which the Italian painters produce
such marvellous effects of color; and if here and there a silver thread
gleamed through the locks it was lost at once amidst their luxuriance.
His eyes were light, and his complexion though without much color, was
singularly transparent. His beauty, indeed, would have been rather
womanly than masculine, but for the height and sinewy spareness of a
frame in which muscular strength was rather adorned than concealed
by an admirable elegance of proportion. You would never have guessed
this man to be an Italian; more likely you would have supposed him a
Parisian. He conversed in French, his dress was of French fashion, his
mode of thought seemed French. Not that he was like the Frenchmen of
the present day--an animal, either rude or reserved; but your ideal of
the _Marquis_ of the old _régime_--the _roué_ of the Regency.
Italian, however, he was, and of a race renowned in Italian history.
But as if ashamed of his country and his birth, he affected to be
a citizen of the world. Heaven help the world if it hold only such
citizens!
"But, Giulio," said Beatrice di Negra, speaking in Italian, "even
granting that you discover this girl, can you suppose that her father
will ever consent to your alliance? Surely you know too well the nature
of your kinsman?"
"_Tu te trompes, ma soeur_," replied Giulio Franzini, Count di
Peschiera, in French as usual--"_tu te trompes_; I knew it before he
had gone through exile and penury. How can I know it now? But comfort
yourself, my too anxious Beatrice, I shall not care for his consent
till I have made sure of his daughter's."
"But how win that in despite of the father?"
"_Eh, mordieu?_" interrupted the Count, with true French gayety; "what
would become of all the comedies ever written, if marriages were not
made in despite of the father? Look you," he resumed, with a very
slight compression of his lip, and a still slighter movement in his
chair; "look you, this is no question of ifs and buts--it is a question
of must and shall--a question of existence to you and to me. When
Danton was condemned to the guillotine, he said, flinging a pellet of
bread at the nose of his respectable judge--'_Mon individu sera bientôt
dans le néant_'--My patrimony is there already! I am loaded with debts.
I see before me, on the one side, ruin or suicide; on the other side,
wedlock and wealth."
"But from those vast possessions which you have been permitted to enjoy
so long, have you really saved nothing against the time when they might
be reclaimed at your hands?"
"My sister," replied the Count, "do I look like a man who saved?
Besides, when the Austrian Emperor, unwilling to raise from his
Lombard domains a name and a house so illustrious as our kinsman's,
and desirous, while punishing that kinsman's rebellion, to reward
my adherence, forbore the peremptory confiscation of those vast
possessions at which my mouth waters while we speak, but, annexing
them to the Crown during pleasure, allowed me, as the next of male
kin, to retain the revenues of one-half for the same very indefinite
period--had I not every reason to suppose, that, before long, I could
so influence his Majesty or his minister, as to obtain a decree
that might transfer the whole, unconditionally and absolutely, to
myself? And methinks I should have done so, but for this accursed,
intermeddling English Milord, who has never ceased to besiege the court
or the minister with alleged extenuations of our cousin's rebellion,
and proofless assertions that I shared it in order to entangle my
kinsman, and betrayed it in order to profit by his spoils. So that,
at last, in return for all my services, and in answer to all my
claims, I received from the minister himself this cold reply: 'Count
of Peschiera, your aid was important, and your reward has been large.
That reward, it would not be for your honor to extend, and justify the
ill opinion of your Italian countrymen by formally appropriating to
yourself all that was forfeited by the treason you denounced. A name so
noble as yours should be dearer to you than fortune itself.'"
"Ah, Giulio," cried Beatrice, her face lighting up, changed in its
whole character; "those were words that might make the demon that
tempts to avarice fly from your breast in shame."
The Count opened his eyes in great amaze; then he glanced round the
room and said, quietly:
"Nobody else hears you, my dear Beatrice, talk common sense. Heroics
sound well in mixed society; but there is nothing less suited to the
tone of a family conversation."
Madame di Negra bent down her head abashed, and that sudden change
in the expression of her countenance, which had seemed to betray
susceptibility to generous emotion, faded as suddenly away.
"But still," she said coldly, "you enjoy one-half of those ample
revenues--why talk, then, of suicide and ruin?"
"I enjoy them at the pleasure of the crown; and what if it be the
pleasure of the crown to recall our cousin, and reinstate him in his
possessions?"
"There is a _probability_, then, of that pardon? When you first
employed me in your researches, you only thought there was a
_possibility_."
"There is a great probability of it, and therefore I am here. I
learned some little time since that the question of such recall had
been suggested by the Emperor, and discussed in Council. The danger
to the State, which might arise from our cousin's wealth, his alleged
abilities--(abilities! bah!)--and his popular name, deferred any
decision on the point; and, indeed, the difficulty of dealing with
myself must have embarrassed the ministry. But it is a mere question
of time. He cannot long remain excluded from the general amnesty,
already extended to the other refugees. The person who gave me this
information is high in power, and friendly to myself; and he added a
piece of advice, on which I acted. 'It was intimated,' said he, 'by one
of the partisans of your kinsman, that the exile could give a hostage
for his loyalty in the person of his daughter and heiress; that she
had arrived at marriageable age; that if she were to wed, with the
Emperor's consent, some one whose attachment to the Austrian crown was
unquestionable, there would be a guarantee both for the faith of the
father, and for the transmission of so important a heritage to safe
and loyal hands. Why not' (continued my friend) 'apply to the Emperor
for his consent to that alliance for yourself?--you, on whom he can
depend;--you who, if the daughter should die, would be the legal heir
to those lands?' On that hint I spoke."
"You saw the Emperor?"
"And after combating the unjust prepossessions against me, I stated,
that so far from my cousin having any fair cause of resentment against
me, when all was duly explained to him, I did not doubt that he would
willingly give me the hand of his child."
"You did?" cried the Marchesa, amazed.
"And," continued the Count imperturbably, as he smoothed, with careless
hand, the snowy plaits of his shirt front--"and that I should thus
have the happiness of becoming myself the guarantee of my kinsman's
loyalty--the agent for the restoration of his honors, while, in the
eyes of the envious and malignant, I should clear up my own name from
all suspicion that I had wronged him."
"And the Emperor consented?"
"_Pardieu_, my dear sister. What else could his majesty do? My
proposition smoothed every obstacle, and reconciled policy with mercy.
It remains, therefore, only to find out, what has hitherto baffled all
our researches, the retreat of our dear kinsfolk, and to make myself a
welcome lover to the demoiselle. There is some disparity of years, I
own; but--unless your sex and my glass flatter me overmuch--I am still
a match for many a gallant of five-and-twenty."
The Count said this with so charming a smile, and looked so
pre-eminently handsome, that he carried off the coxcombry of the words
as gracefully as if they had been spoken by some dazzling hero of the
grand old comedy of Parisian life.
Then interlacing his fingers, and lightly leaning his hands, thus
clasped, upon his sister's shoulder, he looked into her face, and said
slowly--"And now, my sister, for some gentle but deserved reproach.
Have you not sadly failed me in the task I imposed on your regard for
my interests? Is it not some years since you first came to England
on the mission of discovering these worthy relatives of ours? Did I
not entreat you to seduce into your toils the man whom I knew to be
my enemy, and was indubitably acquainted with our cousin's retreat--a
secret he has hitherto locked within his bosom? Did you not tell me,
that though he was then in England, you could find no occasion even to
meet him, but that you had obtained the friendship of the statesman to
whom I directed your attention, as his most intimate associate? And yet
you, whose charms are usually so irresistible, learn nothing from the
statesman, as you see nothing of _Milord_. Nay, baffled and misled, you
actually supposed that the quarry has taken refuge in France. You go
thither--you pretend to search the capital--the provinces, Switzerland,
_que sais-je_?--all in vain,--though--_foi de gentilhomme_--your police
cost me dearly,--you return to England--the same chase, and the same
result. _Palsambleu, ma soeur_, I do too much credit to your talents
not to question your zeal. In a word have you been in earnest--or have
you not had some womanly pleasure in amusing yourself and abusing my
trust?"
"Giulio," answered Beatrice sadly, "you know the influence you have
exercised over my character and my fate. Your reproaches are not just.
I made such inquiries as were in my power, and I have now cause to
believe that I know one who is possessed of this secret, and can guide
us to it."
"Ah, you do!" exclaimed the Count. Beatrice did not heed the
exclamation, but hurried on.
"But grant that my heart shrunk from the task you imposed on me, would
it not have been natural? When I first came to England, you informed
me that your object in discovering the exiles was one which I could
honestly aid. You naturally desired first to know if the daughter
lived; if not, you were the heir. If she did, you assured me you
desired to effect, through my mediation, some liberal compromise with
Alphonso, by which you would have sought to obtain his restoration,
provided he would leave you for life in possession of the grant you
hold from the crown. While these were your objects, I did my best,
ineffectual as it was, to obtain the information required."
"And what made me lose so important though so ineffectual an ally?"
asked the Count, still smiling; but a gleam that belied the smile shot
from his eye.
"What! when you bade me receive and co-operate with the miserable
spies--the false Italians--whom you sent over, and seek to entangle
this poor exile, when found in some rash correspondence, to be revealed
to the court; when you sought to seduce the daughter of the Count
of Peschiera, the descendant of those who had ruled in Italy, into
the informer, the corrupter, and the traitress! No, Giulio--then I
recoiled; and then, fearful of your own sway over me, I retreated into
France. I have answered you frankly."
The Count removed his hands from the shoulders on which they had
reclined so cordially.
"And this," said he, "is your wisdom, and this your gratitude.
You, whose fortunes are bound up in mine--you, who subsist on my
bounty--you, who--"
"Hold," cried the Marchesa, rising, and with a burst of emotion, as
if stung to the utmost, and breaking into revolt from the tyranny of
years--"Hold--gratitude! bounty! Brother, brother--what, indeed, do I
owe to you? The shame and the misery of a life. While yet a child, you
condemned me to marry against my will--against my heart--against my
prayers--and laughed at my tears when I knelt to you for mercy. I was
pure then, Giulio--pure and innocent as the flowers in my virgin crown.
And now--now--"
Beatrice stopped abruptly, and clasped her hands before her face.
"Now you upbraid me," said the Count, unruffled by her sudden passion,
"because I gave you in marriage to a man young and noble?"
"Old in vices and mean of soul! The marriage I forgave you. You had the
right, according to the customs of our country, to dispose of my hand.
But I forgave you not the consolations that you whispered in the ear of
a wretched and insulted wife."
"Pardon me the remark," replied the Count, with a courtly bend of his
head, "but those consolations were also conformable to the customs of
our country, and I was not aware till now that you had wholly disdained
them. And," continued the Count, "you were not so long a wife that the
gall of the chain should smart still. You were soon left a widow--free,
childless, young, beautiful."
"And penniless."
"True, Di Negra was a gambler, and very unlucky; no fault of mine. I
could neither keep the cards from his hands, nor advise him how to play
them."
"And my own portion? Oh, Giulio, I knew but at his death why you had
condemned me to that renegade Genoese. He owed you money, and, against
honor, and I believe against law, you had accepted my fortune in
discharge of the debt."
"He had no other way to discharge it--a debt of honor must be paid--old
stories these. "What matters? Since then my purse has been open to you."
"Yes, not as your sister, but your instrument--your spy! Yes, your
purse has been open--with a niggard hand."
"_Un peu de conscience, ma chère_, you are so extravagant. But come, be
plain. What would you?"
"I would be free from you."
"That is, you would form some second marriage with one of these rich
island lords. _Ma foi_, I respect your ambition."
"It is not so high. I aim but to escape from slavery--to be placed
beyond dishonorable temptation. I desire," cried Beatrice with
increased emotion, "I desire to re-enter the life of woman."
"Eno'!" said the Count with a visible impatience, "is there anything
in the attainment of your object that should render you indifferent to
mine? You desire to marry, if I comprehend you right. And to marry, as
becomes you, you should bring to your husband not debts, but a dowry.
Be it so. I will restore the portion that I saved from the spendthrift
clutch of the Genoese--the moment that it is mine to bestow--- the
moment that I am husband to my kinsman's heiress. And now, Beatrice,
you imply that my former notions revolted your conscience; my present
plan should content it; for by this marriage shall our kinsman regain
his country, and repossess, at least, half his lands. And if I am not
an excellent husband to the demoiselle, it will be her own fault. I
have sown my wild oats. _Je suis bon prince_, when I have things a
little my own way. It is my hope and my intention, and certainly it
will be my interest, to become _digne époux et irréproachable pire de
famille_. I speak lightly--'tis my way. I mean seriously. The little
girl will be very happy with me, and I shall succeed in soothing all
resentment her father may retain. Will you aid me then--yes or no? Aid
me, and you shall indeed be free. The magician will release the fair
spirit he has bound to his will. Aid me not, _ma chère_, and mark,
I do not threaten--I do but warn--aid me not; grant that I become a
beggar, and ask yourself what is to become of you--still young, still
beautiful, and still penniless? Nay, worse than penniless; you have
done me the honor (and here the Count, looking on the table, drew a
letter from a portfolio, emblazoned with his arms and coronet), you
have done me the honor to consult me as to your debts."
"You will restore my fortune?" said the Marchesa, irresolutely--and
averting her head from an odious schedule of figures.
"When my own, with your aid, is secured."
"But do you not overrate the value of my aid?"
"Possibly," said the Count, with a caressing suavity--and he kissed his
sister's forehead. "Possibly; but by my honor, I wish to repair to you
any wrong, real or supposed, I may have done you in past times. I wish
to find again my own dear sister. I may overvalue your aid, but not the
affection from which it comes. Let us be friends, _cara Beatrice Mia_,"
added the Count, for the first time employing Italian words.
The Marchesa laid her head on his shoulder, and her tears flowed
softly. Evidently this man had great influence over her--and evidently,
whatever her cause for complaint, her affection for him was still
sisterly and strong. A nature with fine flashes of generosity, spirit,
honor, and passion, was hers--but uncultured, unguided--spoilt by
the worst social examples--easily led into wrong--not always aware
where the wrong was--letting affections good or bad whisper away her
conscience or blind her reason. Such women are often far more dangerous
when induced to wrong, than those who are thoroughly abandoned--such
women are the accomplices men like the Count of Peschiera most desire
to obtain.
"Ah, Giulio," said Beatrice, after a pause, and looking up at him
through her tears, "when you speak to me thus, you know you can do with
me what you will. Fatherless and motherless, whom had my childhood to
love and obey but you?"
"Dear Beatrice," murmured the Count tenderly--and he again kissed her
forehead. "So," he continued more carelessly--"so the reconciliation
is effected, and our interests and our hearts re-allied. Now, alas! to
descend to business. You say that you know some one whom you believe to
be acquainted with the lurking-place of my father-in-law--that is to
be!"
"I think so. You remind me that I have an appointment with him this
day: it is near the hour--I must leave you."
"To learn the secret?--Quick--quick. I have no fear of your success, if
it is by his heart that you lead him."
"You mistake; on his heart I have no hold. But he has a friend who
loves me, and honorably, and whose cause he pleads. I think here that
I have some means to control or persuade him. If not--ah, he is of a
character that perplexes me in all but his worldly ambition; and how
can we foreigners influence him through _that_?"
"Is he poor, or is he extravagant?"
"Not extravagant, and not positively poor, but dependent."
"Then we have him," said the Count composedly. "If his assistance he
worth buying, we can bid high for it. _Sur mon âme_, I never yet knew
money fail with any man who was both worldly and dependent. I put him
and myself in your hands."
Thus saying, the Count opened the door, and conducted his sister with
formal politeness to her carriage. He then returned, reseated himself,
and mused in silence. As he did so, the muscles of his countenance
relaxed. The levity of the Frenchman fled from his visage, and in
his eye, as it gazed abstractedly into space, there was that steady
depth so remarkable in the old portraits of Florentine diplomatist or
Venetian oligarch. Thus seen, there was in that face, despite all its
beauty, something that would have awed back even the fond gaze of love;
something hard, collected, inscrutable, remorseless; but this change
of countenance did not last long. Evidently thought, though intense
for the moment, was not habitual to the man. Evidently he had lived
the life which takes all things lightly--so he rose with a look of
fatigue, shook and stretched himself, as if to cast off, or grow out
of, an unwelcome and irksome mood. An hour afterwards, the Count of
Peschiera was charming all eyes, and pleasing all ears, in the saloon
of a high-born beauty, whose acquaintance he had made at Vienna, and
whose charms, according to that old and never-truth-speaking oracle,
Polite Scandal, were now said to have attracted to London the brilliant
foreigner.
CHAPTER III.
The Marchesa regained her house, which was in Curzon street, and
withdrew to her own room, to readjust her dress, and remove from her
countenance all traces of the tears she had shed.
Half-an-hour afterwards she was seated in her drawing-room, composed
and calm; nor, seeing her then, could you have guessed that she was
capable of so much emotion and so much weakness. In that stately
exterior, in that quiet attitude, in that elaborate and finished
elegance which comes alike from the arts of the toilet and the
conventional repose of rank, you could see but the woman of the world
and the great lady.
A knock at the door was heard, and in a few moments there entered a
visitor, with the easy familiarity of intimate acquaintance--a young
man, but with none of the bloom of youth. His hair, fine as a woman's,
was thin and scanty, but it fell low over the forehead, and concealed
that noblest of our human features. "A gentleman," says Apuleius,
"ought, if he can, to wear his whole mind on his forehead."[8] The
young visitor would never have committed so frank an imprudence. His
cheek was pale, and in his step and in his movements there was a
languor that spoke of fatigued nerves or delicate health. But the light
of the eye and the tone of the voice were those of a mental temperament
controlling the bodily--vigorous and energetic. For the rest, his
general appearance was distinguished by a refinement alike intellectual
and social. Once seen, you would not easily forget him. And the reader
no doubt already recognizes Randal Leslie. His salutation, as I before
said, was that of intimate familiarity; yet it was given and replied
to with that unreserved openness which denotes the absence of a more
tender sentiment.
[8] I must be pardoned for annexing the original, since it loses much
by translation:--"Hominem liberum et magnificum debere, si queat, in
primori fronte, animum gestare."
Seating himself by the Marchesa's side, Randal began first to converse
on the fashionable topics and gossip of the day; but it was observable,
that, while he extracted from her the current anecdote and scandal
of the great world, neither anecdote nor scandal did he communicate
in return. Randal Leslie had already learned the art not to commit
himself, nor to have quoted against him one ill-natured remark upon the
eminent. Nothing more injures the man who would rise beyond the fame
of the _salons_, than to be considered backbiter and gossip; "yet it
is always useful," thought Randal Leslie, "to know the foibles--the
small social and private springs by which the great are moved. Critical
occasions may arise in which such knowledge may be power." And hence,
perhaps, (besides a more private motive, soon to be perceived,) Randal
did not consider his time thrown away in cultivating Madame di Negra's
friendship. For despite much that was whispered against her, she had
succeeded in dispelling the coldness with which she had at first been
received in the London circles. Her beauty, her grace, and her high
birth, had raised her into fashion, and the homage of men of the first
station, while it perhaps injured her reputation as a woman, added to
her celebrity as fine lady. So much do we cold English, prudes though
we be, forgive to the foreigner what we avenge on the native.
Sliding at last from these general topics into very well-bred and
elegant personal compliment, and reciting various eulogies, which Lord
this and the Duke of that had passed on the Marchesa's charms, Randal
laid his hand on hers, with the license of admitted friendship, and
said--
"But since you have deigned to confide in me, since when (happily
for me, and with a generosity which no coquette could have been
capable) you, in good time, repressed into friendship feelings that
might else have ripened into those you are formed to inspire and
disdain to return, you told me with your charming smile, 'Let no one
speak to me of love who does not offer me his hand, and with it the
means to supply tastes that I fear are terribly extravagant;'--since
thus you allowed me to divine your natural objects, and upon that
understanding our intimacy has been founded, you will pardon me for
saying that the admiration you excite amongst the _grands seigneurs_
I have named, only serves to defeat your own purpose, and scare away
admirers less brilliant, but more in earnest. Most of these gentlemen
are unfortunately married; and they who are not belong to those
members of our aristocracy who, in marriage, seek more than beauty and
wit--namely, connections to strengthen their political station, or
wealth to redeem a mortgage and sustain a title."
"My dear Mr. Leslie," replied the Marchesa--and a certain sadness might
be detected in the tone of the voice and the droop of the eye--"I have
lived long enough in the real world to appreciate the baseness and the
falsehood of most of those sentiments which take the noblest names. I
see through the hearts of the admirers you parade before me, and know
that not one of them would shelter with his ermine the woman to whom he
talks of his heart. Ah," continued Beatrice, with a softness of which
she was unconscious, but which might have been extremely dangerous to
youth less steeled and self-guarded than was Randal Leslie's--"ah,
I am less ambitious than you suppose. I have dreamed of a friend, a
companion, a protector, with feelings still fresh, undebased by the
low round of vulgar dissipation and mean pleasures--of a heart so new,
that it might restore my own to what it was in its happy spring. I have
seen in your country some marriages, the mere contemplation of which
has filled my eyes with delicious tears. I have learned in England to
know the value of home. And with such a heart as I describe, and such a
home, I could forget that I ever knew a less pure ambition."
"This language does not surprise me," said Randal; "yet it does not
harmonize with your former answer to me."
"To you," repeated Beatrice smiling, and regaining her lighter manner;
"to you--true. But I never had the vanity to think that your affection
for me could bear the sacrifices it would cost you in marriage; that
you, with your ambition, could bound your dreams of happiness to home.
And then, too," said she, raising her head, and with a certain grave
pride in her air--"and _then_, I could not have consented to share my
fate with one whom my poverty would cripple. I could not listen to my
heart, if it had beat for a lover without fortune, for to him I could
then have brought but a burden, and betrayed him into a union with
poverty and debt. Now it may be different. Now I may have the dowry
that befits my birth. And now I may be free to choose according to my
heart as woman, not according to my necessities, as one poor, harassed,
and despairing."
"Ah," said Randal, interested and drawing still closer towards his fair
companion--"ah, I congratulate you sincerely; you have cause, then, to
think that you shall be--rich?"
The Marchesa paused before she answered, and during that pause Randal
relaxed the web of the scheme which he had been secretly weaving, and
rapidly considered whether, if Beatrice di Negra would indeed be rich,
she might answer to himself as a wife; and in what way, if so, he had
best change his tone from that of friendship into that of love. While
thus reflecting, Beatrice answered--
"Not rich for an Englishwoman; for an Italian, yes. My fortune should
be half a million--"
"Half a million!" cried Randal, and with difficulty he restrained
himself from falling at her feet in adoration.
"Of francs!" continued the Marchesa.
"Francs! Ah," said Randal, with a long-drawn breath, and recovering
from his sudden enthusiasm, "about twenty thousand pounds!--eight
hundred a-year at four per cent. A very handsome portion,
certainly--(Genteel poverty! he murmured to himself. What an escape
I have had! but I see--I see. This will smooth all difficulties in
the way of my better and earlier project. I see)--a very handsome
portion," he repeated aloud--"not for a _grand seigneur_, indeed, but
still for a gentleman of birth and expectations worthy of your choice,
if ambition be not your first object. Ah, while you spoke with such
endearing eloquence of feelings that were fresh, of a heart that was
new, of the happy English home, you might guess that my thoughts ran to
my friend who loves you so devotedly, and who so realizes your ideal.
Providentially, with us, happy marriages and happy homes are found not
in the gay circles of London fashion, but at the hearths of our rural
nobility--our untitled country gentlemen. And who, amongst all your
adorers, can offer you a lot so really enviable as the one whom, I see
by your blush, you already guess that I refer to?"
"Did I blush?" said the Marchesa, with a silvery laugh. "Nay, I think
that your zeal for your friend misled you. But I will own frankly, I
have been touched by his honest ingenuous love--so evident, yet rather
looked than spoken. I have contrasted the love that honors me with the
suitors that seek to degrade; more I cannot say. For though I grant
that your friend is handsome, high-spirited, and generous, still he is
not what--"
"You mistake, believe me," interrupted Randal. "You shall not finish
your sentence. He is all that you do not yet suppose him; for his
shyness, and his very love, his very respect for your superiority, do
not allow his mind and his nature to appear to advantage. You, it is
true, have a taste for letters and poetry rare among your countrywomen.
He has not at present--few men have. But what Cimon would not be
refined by so fair an Iphigenia? Such frivolities as he now shows
belong but to youth and inexperience of life. Happy the brother who
could see his sister the wife of Frank Hazeldean."
The Marchesa leant her cheek on her hand in silence. To her, marriage
was more than it usually seems to dreaming maiden or to disconsolate
widow. So had the strong desire to escape from the control of her
unprincipled and remorseless brother grown a part of her very soul--so
had whatever was best and highest in her very mixed and complex
character been galled and outraged by her friendless and exposed
position, the equivocal worship rendered to her beauty, the various
debasements to which pecuniary embarrassments had subjected her--(not
without design on the part of the count, who, though grasping, was not
miserly, and who by precarious and seemingly capricious gifts at one
time, and refusals of all aid at another, had involved her in debt in
order to retain his hold on her)--so utterly painful and humiliating to
a woman of her pride and her birth was the station that she held in the
world--that in marriage she saw liberty, life, honor, self-redemption;
and these thoughts, while they compelled her to co-operate with the
schemes, by which the count, on securing to himself a bride, was to
bestow on herself a dower, also disposed her now to receive with favour
Randal Leslie's pleadings on behalf of his friend.
The advocate saw that he had made an impression, and with the
marvellous skill which his knowledge of those natures that engaged
his study bestowed on his intelligence, he continued to improve his
cause by such representations as were likely to be most effective.
With what admirable tact he avoided panegyric of Frank as the mere
individual, and drew him rather as the type, the ideal of what a woman
in Beatrice's position might desire, in the safety, peace, and honor
of a home, in the trust, and constancy, and honest confiding love of
its partner! He did not paint an Elysium; he described a haven; he did
not glowingly delineate a hero of romance--he soberly portrayed that
Representative of the Respectable and the Real which a woman turns to
when romance begins to seem to her but delusion. Verily, if you could
have looked into the heart of the person he addressed, and heard him
speak, you would have cried admiringly, "Knowledge _is_ power; and this
man, if as able on a larger field of action, should play no mean part
in the history of his time."
Slowly Beatrice roused herself from the reveries which crept over her
as he spoke--slowly, and with a deep sigh, and said--
"Well, well, grant all you say; at least before I can listen to so
honorable a love, I must be relieved from the base and sordid pressure
that weighs on me. I cannot say to the man who woos me, 'Will you pay
the debts of the daughter of Franzini, and the widow of di Negra?'"
"Nay, your debts, surely, make so slight a portion of your dowry."
"But the dowry has to be secured;" and here, turning the tables upon
her companion, as the apt proverb expresses it, Madame di Negra
extended her hand to Randal, and said in her most winning accents, "You
are, then, truly and sincerely my friend?"
"Can you doubt it?"
"I prove that I do not, for I ask your assistance."
"Mine? How?"
"Listen; my brother has arrived in London--"
"I see that arrival announced in the papers."
"And he comes, empowered by the consent of the Emperor, to ask the hand
of a relation and countrywoman of his; an alliance that will heal long
family dissensions, and add to his own fortunes those of an heiress.
My brother, like myself, has been extravagant. The dowry which by law
he still owes me it would distress him to pay till this marriage be
assured."
"I understand," said Randal. "But how can I aid this marriage?"
"By assisting us to discover the bride. She, with her father, sought
refuge and concealment in England."
"The father had, then, taken part in some political disaffections, and
was proscribed?"
"Exactly so; and so well has he concealed himself that he has baffled
all our efforts to discover his retreat. My brother can obtain him his
pardon in cementing this alliance--"
"Proceed."
"Ah Randal, Randal, is this the frankness of friendship? You know
that I have before sought to obtain the secret of our relation's
retreat--sought in vain to obtain it from Mr. Egerton, who assuredly
knows it--"
"But who communicates no secrets to living man," said Randal, almost
bitterly; "who, close and compact as iron, is as little malleable to me
as to you."
"Pardon me. I know you so well that I believe you could attain to any
secret you sought earnestly to acquire. Nay, more, I believe that you
know already that secret which I ask you to share with me."
"What on earth makes you think so?"
"When, some weeks ago you asked me to describe the personal appearance
and manners of the exile, which I did partly from the recollections
of my childhood, partly from the description given to me by others,
I could not but notice your countenance, and remark its change; in
spite," said the Marchesa, smiling, and watching Randal while she
spoke--"in spite of your habitual self-command. And when I pressed
you to own that you had actually seen some one who tallied with that
description, your denial did not deceive me. Still more, when returning
recently, of your own accord, to the subject, you questioned me so
shrewdly as to my motives in seeking the clue to our refugees, and I
did not then answer you satisfactorily, I could detect--"
"Ha, ha," interrupted Randal, with the low soft laugh by which
occasionally he infringed upon Lord Chesterfield's recommendations to
shun a merriment so natural as to be ill-bred,--"ha, ha, you have the
fault of all observers too minute and refined. But even granting that
I may have seen some Italian exiles, (which is likely enough,) what
could be more simple than my seeking to compare your description with
their appearance; and granting that I might suspect some one amongst
them to be the man you search for, what more simple, also, than that
I should desire to know if you meant him harm or good in discovering
his 'whereabout?' For ill," added Randal, with an air of prudery, "ill
would it become me to betray, even to friendship, the retreat of one
who would hide from persecution; and even if I did so--for honor itself
is a weak safeguard against your fascinations--such indiscretion might
be fatal to my future career."
"How?"
"Do you not say that Egerton knows the secret, yet will not
communicate?--and is he a man who would ever forgive in me an
imprudence that committed himself? My dear friend, I will tell you
more. When Audley Egerton first noticed my growing intimacy with you,
he said, with his usual dryness of counsel, 'Randal, I do not ask you
to discontinue acquaintance with Madame di Negra--for an acquaintance
with women like her forms the manners and refines the intellect; but
charming women are dangerous, and Madame di Negra is--a charming woman."
The Marchesa's face flushed. Randal resumed: "'Your fair acquaintance'
(I am still quoting Egerton) 'seeks to discover the home of a
countryman of hers. She suspects that I know it. She may try to learn
it through you. Accident may possibly give you the information she
requires. Beware how you betray it. By one such weakness I should judge
of your general character. He from whom a woman can extract a secret
will never be fit for public life.' Therefore, my dear Marchesa, even
supposing that I possess this secret, you would be no true friend of
mine to ask me to reveal what would imperil all my prospects. For as
yet," added Randal, with a gloomy shade on his brow,--"as yet I do not
stand alone and erect--I _lean_;--I am dependent."
"There may be a way," replied Madame di Negra, persisting, "to
communicate this intelligence, without the possibility of Mr. Egerton's
tracing our discovery to yourself; and, though I will not press you
further, I add this--you urge me to accept your friend's hand; you seem
interested in the success of his suit, and you plead it with a warmth
that shows how much you regard what you suppose is his happiness;
I will never accept his hand till I can do so without blush for my
penury--till my dowry is secured, and that can only be by my brother's
union with the exile's daughter. For your friend's sake, therefore,
think well how you can aid me in the first step to that alliance. The
young lady once discovered, and my brother has no fear for the success
of his suit."
"And you would marry Frank if the dower was secured?"
"Your arguments in his favor seem irresistible," replied Beatrice,
looking down.
A flash went from Randal's eyes, and he mused a few moments.
Then slowly rising, and drawing on his gloves, he said--
"Well, at least you so far reconcile my honor towards aiding your
research, that you now inform me that you mean no ill to the exile."
"Ill!--the restoration to fortune, honors, his native land."
"And you so far enlist my heart on your side, that you inspire me with
the hope to contribute to the happiness of two friends whom I dearly
love. I will therefore diligently seek to ascertain if, among the
refugees I have met with, lurk those whom you seek; and if so I will
thoughtfully consider how to give you the clue. Meanwhile, not one
incautious word to Egerton."
"Trust me--I am a woman of the world."
Randal now had gained the door. He paused, and renewed carelessly--
"This young lady must be heiress to great wealth, to induce a young man
of your brother's rank to take so much pains to discover her."
"Her wealth _will_ be vast," replied the Marchesa; "and if any thing
from wealth or influence in a foreign state could be permitted to prove
my brother's gratitude--"
"Ah, fie," interrupted Randal, and approaching Madame di Negra, he
lifted her hand to his lips, and said gallantly.
"This is reward enough to your _preux chevalier_."
With those words he took his leave.
* * * * *
It is always safe to call an assailer of morality licentious, though
many of its defenders be not virtuous.
Authors and Books.
A pendant to Professor Creasy's _Decisive Battles_ has been issued at
Stuttgart, under the title of _Grundzüge einer Einleitung zum Studium
der Kriegsgeschichte_ (Outlines of an Introduction to the History of
War). The author divides his work into two parts: the first extending
from 550 B.C. to A.D. 1350; the second, from 1350 to 1850; and each of
these parts he arranges in three periods. In the first period (550 to
250 B.C.), he finds that the controlling part in war must be attributed
to distinguished and leading individualities; in the second (250 to
50 B.C.), that the dominant element was the political and national,
especially the peculiar constitution and nationality of the Romans;
the third (50 B.C. to 1350 A.D.), is remarkable for the number and
variety of warlike events, and the gradual decline of the system used
in prosecuting wars; in the fourth (A.D. 1350 to 1650), the art of
war was greatly advanced, especially in respect to technical science,
fortifications, &c.; in the fifth (1650 to 1790), this progress
continued, and tactics were greatly improved as well as strategy; the
sixth period (1790 to 1850), is remarkable for the rapid development
of every branch of warlike art and science, both theoretical and
practical. These conclusions are arrived at after a spirited historical
review of the different periods. This introduction the author promises
to follow up with a complete work.
* * * * *
An interesting correspondence of the period of the thirty years' war
has been discovered by M. Welchoff, Councillor of State, in an old
travelling trunk in the archives of the Aulic chamber of Celle, in
Hanover, that did not appear to have been opened since the papers were
deposited. It comes down to the date of the battle of Breitenfeld, and
includes letters from Pappenheim, Gustavus Adolphus, and other leaders
of the time, with the rough draughts of the letters of Duke George of
Brunswick, Luneberg, to whom the whole collection probably belonged.
A similar discovery was lately made by M. Dudik, commissioned by the
government of Austria to search the libraries of Sweden for material of
this kind, in Stockholm and Upsal. The history of the thirty years' war
has therefore to be rewritten.
* * * * *
_Albion and Erin_, is the title of a little volume, containing the
choicest songs of Moore, Byron, Burns, Shelley, Campbell, and Thompson,
with selections from Percy's Reliques, each piece being accompanied by
a faithful and elegant translation into German, printed on the opposite
page. For American students of German, or German students of English,
nothing better could be desired. (Sold by Rudolph Garrigue, Astor
House.)
* * * * *
The thirteenth meeting of the Association of German Philologists,
Teachers and Orientalists, was opened at Erlangen on the 1st of
October, and continued four days, about one hundred and eighty
members being present. Böckh of Berlin, Thiersch, Halm and Spengel of
Munich, Gerlach of Basle, Grotefend of Hanover, Krüger of Brunswick,
were among the most distinguished _gelehrten_. There was even one
member from Russia in the person of Prof. Vater of Kasan. Austria
and Electoral Hesse were not represented. Professor Döderlein was
president, and Professor Nagelsbach vice-president. The president
opened the general session with a discourse upon the position and value
of modern philology. In the meeting of October 2d, Wocher of Ehrinegn
read an essay on phonology, or the essential significance of sounds;
and Beyer of Erlangen, another on an antique statue in the Munich
collection which had been supposed to represent Leukothea, but which he
demonstrated to be Charitas. In the exercises of the third and fourth
day were included an essay by Böckh on a Greek inscription, one by
Döderlein on an ode of Horace, one by Nagelsbach on a passage of the
Iliad, and one by Gerlach on a subject from Roman antiquities. The
whole, however interesting to advanced scholars, had little to attract
or satisfy the mass of intelligent persons.
* * * * *
The third volume of G. WEIL'S _Geschichte der Chalifen_ (History of the
Califs), has appeared in Germany, where the second was published three
years since. This volume brings the history down into the period of
the crusades, and gives us the exact life of men of such proportions
as Haroun Alrashid, and Saladin. In ordinary cases when history enters
the field where romance has achieved its most brilliant successes, it
must be written with the utmost power not to seem pale and lifeless by
contrast, but here the simplest narrative would have all the charm of
fancy. For the rest Mr. Weil is fully equal to his subject; and throws
a flood of light upon its more recondite features. His work is an
invaluable addition to our means of knowing the history and natives of
the Orient.
* * * * *
_Die Deutschen in Böhmen_ (The Germans in Bohemia), is pleasant reading
for those who like to study the manners and peculiarities of foreign
countries in some detail. It also has its value for the political
student who would make himself acquainted with the intermixtures and
relations of the different races in Central Europe. It treats the
subject in its geographical, statistical, economical and historical
bearings, as well as in respect to manners, customs, and modes of life.
(Prague, 1851.)
We are indebted to the Messrs. Westermann, of this city, for the ninth
and tenth parts of Dr. ANDREE'S admirable work, entitled, _Amerika_,
of which we have before spoken at length. These parts conclude the
first volume, of 810 octavo pages, printed with an elegance which,
among us, is not generally attributed to German books. This volume
is devoted to North America, and these two parts, are divided into
chapters upon:--the New England States; the Middle States; the Southern
Atlantic States; the South on the Gulf of Mexico; the Western Slave
States; the Non-slaveholding, West and North; the Far West, and the
Pacific Coast. Each state and territory is treated with extreme
clearness and comprehensiveness, and with a correctness that seems
astonishing, when we consider that the book was written in Germany.
This volume is dedicated to Dr. Hermann E. Ludewig, of this city, in
three or four pages, giving an account of the motives which induced
Dr. Andree to write the work; we translate the dedicatory paragraph:
"This book, honored sir, I dedicate to you. The literature of North
American history is greatly indebted to your valuable labors; for
these ten years no small part of your time has been devotedly spent
in disinterestedly aiding, by advice and assistance, our emigrating
countrymen on their arrival in New-York. In your new country, which you
understand so keenly and so profoundly, you are still a cultivator of
German science, holding your old fatherland in appropriate honor. You
are in America a worthy and most estimable representative of German
culture and German integrity. Receive friendly this inscription, and
the cordial greetings I send you beyond the sea!" We trust the other
volumes of this work may speedily appear: the second will be upon
Mexico and Central America, and the third upon South America.
* * * * *
SPINOZA'S _Tractatus Politicus_ is the subject of a work recently
published at Dessau, by J. E. HORN. The author defends Spinoza's
political ideas as of a practical nature, and not at all connected with
the analogous theories of modern German metaphysicians. The work is the
result of much thought, and of all the industry which seems to belong
to every scholar of Germany.
Another work on Spinoza, is by Professor ZIMMERMANN of Olmütz, and is
entitled, _Uber einige logische Fehler der spinozistischen Ethik_. It
attempts to prove at length that the syllogistic method of the great
Jew can only be correct on the supposition that in substance the idea
and the reality are coincident, which supposition Spinoza himself
expressly affirms. The radical fault of this method, according to the
Professor, is the application of mathematical demonstration to things
not susceptible thereof. On the whole this publication adds little to
the treasures of philosophy.
Another, and a valuable contribution, to the almost infinite Goethean
literature, has appeared in Germany, in the second volume of J. W.
SCHAFER'S life of the great poet. It begins with the year 1786, and
comes down to the death of the modern Shakespeare. Its materials are
drawn from the writings of Goethe himself, and from the published
letters and memoirs upon separate portions of his life. The Italian
Journey is the subject of a special disquisition. Goethe's political
opinions are also discussed in connection with his behavior during
the war of independence. Finally, we have the man in his old age,
when his leading feature of character is said to be universality of
mental activity. The style of the book is clear and condensed, and its
fairness and impartiality a subject of laudation.
A third volume of GOETHE'S _Correspondence with Madame von Stein_
has been published in Germany. It is no less interesting than the
preceding, whether as a collection of letters, or as a revelation
of the character and private history of the greatest man in German
literature. The assertion that Goethe was really a man of cold and
heartless nature, and that the warmth of feeling and freshness of
sentiment displayed in his poems was merely fictitious, is entirely
refuted by this correspondence.
A collection of poems, by WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, the son of the great
poet, was published by Cotta, of Stuttgart, in October last. We
have not seen the book, but the publisher's advertisement is quite
apologetic, and indicates that the name of the father has not insured
the inheritance of his genius.
* * * * *
A new work entitled _Das Brittische Reich in Europe_ (The British
Empire in Europe), has just appeared at Leipzig, in which the progress
and power of England are compared with those of the United States. The
author, Herr MEIDINGER, is an admirer of the present policy of England,
and exhibits at length the statistics of the advance made by the
country under that policy. A statistical survey of the religious and
moral condition of Ireland, which forms a part of the work, has also
been printed as a separate book.
* * * * *
Students of middle-age antiquities may find a bone to gnaw in _Dat Spil
fan der Upstandinge_ (The Play of the Resurrection), just published
with annotations by Herr ETTMULLER at Quedlinburg. This is said to
be greatly superior to the mass of the religious dramas of the time;
it has a genuine unity and is not disfigured by the admixture of
buffoonery with the awful realities of New Testament history. It is in
the Low German dialect, and dates from the fifteenth century.
* * * * *
A good history of French literature has been published in German by
Professor KREYSIG of Elbing. It is designed for a schoolbook, and
evinces both learning and fairness.
A valuable contribution to German history has been brought out at
Berlin, by KURD VON SCHÖZER, under the title of _Die Hansa und der
Deutsche Ritterorden in den Ostseeländen_ (The Hanseatic League and
the German Knighthood in the Baltic provinces). The author has not
merely exhausted the old chronicles of his subject in the archives and
libraries of Germany, but has wrought up his materials into a living
narrative, full of romantic interest as well as historical instruction.
* * * * *
A Catholic writer, Count EICHENDORFF, has published, at Leipzig, _Der
Deutsche Roman des 18ten Jahrhunderts_ (German Romance in the 18th
century), in which the subject of romance literature is treated in its
relation to Christianity, but not in a thorough or profound manner,
and with too much dogmatism, and apparent prejudice. His idea is, that
there is no Christianity outside of the Catholic Church, and that all
novels which are not Catholic are unchristian.
* * * * *
MADAME BLAZE DE BURY has just published at Bremen, in Germany, a
novel, entitled, _Falkenburg_, which was issued at the same time in
English by Colburn, in London. The German copy is the work of the
authoress herself. She resides, at Paris, as the wife of the well-known
_littérateur_, Henri Blaze. This novel is certainly a cosmopolitan
production--written as it is, in German, by an Englishwoman, married to
a Frenchman, and residing at Paris.
* * * * *
The history of religious organizations is enriched by Professor
RICHTER'S _Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirchenverfassung in
Deutschland_ (History of the Constitution of the Evangelical Church in
Germany), which has just appeared at Leipzig. The work is highly, and,
we doubt not, very justly commended.
* * * * *
An elaborate _Life of Sir Robert Peel_, with a collection of his
speeches, has been published in German, by Herr KUNZEL. It is a warm
tribute of admiration for the English statesman, and for that process
of very gradual reform by which England is distinguished. (Brunswick, 2
vols.)
* * * * *
Dr. ZIMMERMANN, whose excellent history of the Peasants' War deserves
to be better known to English readers, has just published, at
Darmstadt, a history of the English Revolution, which he dedicates to
all parties of the German people, and which we doubt not all parties
may profitably study.
* * * * *
A history of Norway has been published at Leipzig, in a neat little
volume. It brings the narrative of that country down to the present
time, dividing it into seven periods, and giving a succinct account of
each. The history of Andreas Faye serves as the basis of this work.
We gave in these pages, a few months since, an account of the labors
and sufferings of the Hungarian traveller and ethnographer REGULY, who
spent ten painful years among the Finnish tribes of Northern Europe and
Asia, with a view to ascertain the ancient of the Magyars. Reguly is
now hard at work at Pesth arranging for publication the immense mass
of materials gathered on this long expedition, and meanwhile another
savan, John Jerney, has just published in two heavy quartos the result
of a journey he made for the same purpose during 1844 and '45, in
Southern Russia. His work is interesting rather from its information
on collateral subjects than because he has cleared up the main problem
which his explorations had in view. His conclusion is that the Magyars
are of Parthian origin.
* * * * *
In the present attention to recent Magyar history, a useful aid may be
found in _Ungarn's Politische Charaktere_ (The Political Notabilities
of Hungary), just published at Mayence. It contains the biography of
forty-eight different persons. Its author is a warm admirer of Kossuth
and his policy.
* * * * *
A collection of the speeches, proclamations, &c., of that sentimental
tyrant, Frederick William IV. of Prussia, has just been published at
Berlin. It includes all the productions of his Majesty from March 6,
1848, to May 31, 1851, and will be useful to trunk-makers and future
historians.
* * * * *
In the present interest attaching to Arctic voyages, SCHUNDT'S _Bilder
aus dem Norden_ (Pictures from the North), collected in a journey
toward the North Pole, in the year 1850, is worth looking into. (Jena,
1851.)
* * * * *
Prof. J. E. KOPP has published, at Vienna, a volume of documents on the
history of the Swiss Confederation.
* * * * *
The success in Europe of General BEM'S plan of teaching history and
an exact chronology, attracted the attention of intelligent friends
of education in Massachusetts, at whose suggestion Miss E. P. PEABODY
has prepared a system of the same sort for American schools. The plan
was not one superseding the necessity of study, but guiding it, and
rendering it effective. It requires a very careful attention, which
may be slighted either by scholar or teacher. It saves time, indeed,
by rewarding labor, and by making the everlasting review of the ground
unnecessary, fostering by means of the senses what is attained. Miss
Peabody, in the appendix to the tables of chronology which form
the manual of this system, has aimed to give some general hints to
teachers, opening out before them a more generous method of studying
history than has been usual in our schools and colleges.
The French democrats and socialists bring out this year the usual
variety of Almanacs for the propagation of their doctrines among
the people. The _Almanach du Travail_ contains articles by Agricole
Perdiguier, cabinet-maker and representative in the National Assembly;
M. Perdiguier is understood to be the original hero of George Sand's
_Compagnons du Tour de France_; several other well-known literary and
political characters also contribute; the publication of the work
is the enterprise of an association of printers and engravers. The
_Almanach du Village_ is published by the _Propagande Démocratique
Européene_; its editor is M. Joigneaux, a representative, and Pierre
Dupont, the democratic poet, is among the contributors. The _Almanach
Populaire de la France_ is a more elaborate publication, and boasts
a larger circle of writers; Pascal Duprat, Alphonse Esquiros, André
Cochut, Fr. Arago, and Victor Schoelcher, are among them. The _Almanach
des Opprimés_, by Hippolyte Magen, is a Voltairian production, devoted
to ridiculing the Catholic clergy and the saints of the calender in a
style of utter irreverence for their sacred character, and even for
their integrity and respectability as individuals. The _Répubilique du
Peuple_ is simply a democratic almanac, but its ability is remarkable.
Arago, the astronomer Carnot, who possibly will be the candidate of the
democratic party for President, Colonel Charras, Michel (de Bourges),
Alphonse Karr, and others of the old moderate republican party are
contributors. It is adorned with neat engravings; among them is a
portrait of Dupont, the poet.
* * * * *
A well-known publicist, M. CROCE-SPINELLI, has just issued at Paris an
essay on popular government, under the title of _L'Arche Populaire_. It
treats principally of the French constitution, whose faults are said
to be--1st, that it confides too much in aristocracy and too little in
democracy; 2d, that the legislature may render itself independent of
the people by whom it is elected, and betray their interests: 3d, that
the authority of the President is too great, and is even dangerous to
the development of democratic ideas and forces. The author concludes
his work with the plan of a constitution which he thinks will be free
from these defects.
* * * * *
The ASIATIC SOCIETY of Paris announces the publication of a collection
of Oriental works, with French translations, without commentaries, but
with very copious indexes. The majority will be Arabic, and, with few
exceptions, hitherto unknown to Occidental students generally. The
prices will be made very low, it is hoped not higher than those of
ordinary French books. This will be accomplished by introducing them
as text-books into the schools in Algiers, Egypt, and Constantinople,
where French is taught, and thus securing a large sale.
A publication worthy of the utmost praise is the _Revue de
l'Architecture et des Travaux Publiques_, published at Paris, under
the editorial care of M. CESAR DALY, one of the most learned and
accomplished architects in Europe. This review, which is now in its
ninth year, is issued monthly, with the utmost elegance both of
typography and engravings. The number for October contains articles
on the following subjects:--the preservation and restoration of the
Cathedrals of France, the Church of St. Paul at Nismes, Stereochromy,
the Museum at St. Petersburg, Chinese Monuments discovered in Ireland,
the Public Garden and Swimming School at Bordeaux, &c., &c.; it has
four large engravings. The work treats every branch, historic and
practical, of architecture and engineering, and should be in the hands
of every architect and engineer, and in the library of every man of
taste whose leisure and meditations lead him to the study of the
beautiful and useful arts. It may be procured in Paris at the low rate
of 40 francs a-year.
* * * * *
A book well suited to the times is Dr. FIGUIER'S _Exposition et
Histoire des principales Découvertes Modernes_, which has just appeared
at Paris in two small volumes. It treats of photography, the serial
and magnetic telegraphs, etherization, galvanoplasty and chemical
gilding, aërostatics, lighting by gas, Leverrier's planet, gunpowder,
and gun-cotton. With respect to the glory of discovering photography,
Dr. Figuier restores it to M. Niepce, of Chalon-sur-Saone, proving that
he originated the conception, and that Daguerre did nothing more than
perfect the process. Singularly enough, M. Figuier omits the steamboat
and railroad from the discoveries whose history he so carefully and
conscientiously records, but even with these omissions his work is
valuable and interesting both to the savan and the ordinary reader.
* * * * *
The editors of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, at Paris, have made up a
very useful manual of the history of the year 1850, under the title of
_Annuaire des Deux Mondes_, which is sold by Balliére, in Broadway.
It contains an account of the political events, the international
relations and diplomacy, the administration, commerce, and finances,
and the periodical press and literature of every country which
possesses those products of civilization. The constitutions and affairs
of Italy, Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain,
Portugal, England, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Turkey, Greece, United
States, Mexico, the South American Republics, and even of the African
and Asiatic races, are discussed with moderation and an effort for
impartiality, which is laudable, if not always successful. The most
recent statistics are given with reference to every country; and, as a
book of reference, it will be found very useful.
The _Calvin Translation Society_, which for the last ten years has been
issuing, at irregular intervals, a complete and very handsome edition
of CALVIN'S works, in English--to make about fifty octavo volumes--will
have to add to them a new collection of his _Letters_. It appears that
the government of Louis Philippe committed the preparation of the
Unpublished Letters of the great Reformer to Professor BONNETT, who
had been dismissed from the College of Nismes for speaking too highly
of Luther. He travelled in France and Switzerland, at the expense of
the Government, in order to collect the letters. After the revolution,
the influence of the Catholic clergy was such that the new minister
of Public Instruction found a thousand difficulties in the way of
accepting the labor of M. Bonnett, and the subject was finally referred
to a committee, who reported in favor of the publication; yet, to
split the difference with the clergy, they, on pretence of a saving
of expenses, ordered that some of the less important letters should
be omitted, and that the Latin and French letters should be published
together in the same volume. The number of Calvin's unpublished letters
in the collection is 497; of these 190 are in French, and 307 in Latin.
* * * * *
The aged LACRETELLE, who of late years has lived in retirement near
Macon, reposing upon his fame as an historian, appeared recently at the
Academy in that city, on the day when the prizes of the Agricultural
Society were distributed, and delivered an oration, marked by the
energy and force of youth, but not by its hopefulness. He is now
eighty-five years old; and on this occasion, was particularly severe
against the communists and socialists, who, he thought, were bent on
destroying every thing good, and upsetting the world. This was uttered
with a point and bitterness that did no discredit to the censor of the
press under both the Empire and the Restoration.
* * * * *
M. ROMAIN CORUNT has commenced, in _La Presse_, a series of Critical
Studies on Socialism, which M. Girardin introduces with a special
editorial, and which promises to be valuable. It was not originally
designed for publication, but to satisfy its author's curiosity as to
the ideas and aims of the revolution of 1848. He has accordingly gone
analytically through the writings of all the socialist schools. He
commences his exposition with Auguste Comte.
* * * * *
A FRENCH publisher advertises the memoirs of the celebrated actress
Mademoiselle MARS, who died at a great age some half dozen years ago.
Like those of Pompadour, Crequi, Dubarri, Fouche, Robespierre, and many
others, they will undoubtedly turn out to be a fabrication by some
ingenious literary trickster, yet it is probable that they will be
amusing.
* * * * *
The five academies of the Institute of France held their annual meeting
on the 25th of October. M. de Tocqueville presiding. In opening the
meeting, the chairman delivered a discourse, which is praised as
possessing "a great conciseness and an exquisite sense." Its topic was
the aim of this annual reunion of the five divisions of the Institute.
The Volney prize, which had been competed for by ten different works,
was awarded to Dr. STEINTHAL, for a manuscript treatise, written
in German, called _A Comparative Exposition of a Family of Negro
Languages, in its Phonetic and Psychological Aspects_. This family of
languages is that spoken by the Yoloffs and Bambaras. This prize is
simply 1200 francs; it was established by the famous Volney, with a
view to aid in the formation of a universal language. An equal prize
was also awarded by the Institute to Dr. M. S. MUNK, for his work on
_Sundry Hebrew Grammarians of the Tenth Century_; and an honorable
mention to Dr. LORENZ DIEFFENBACH, for his _Comparative Dictionary of
the Gothic Language_. These three gentlemen are Germans, and it is not
surprising that they should thus carry off the honors where the field
of competition is philology. After the prizes had been announced, a
memoir on the Physical Constitution of the Sun and the Stars, by M.
Arago, of the Academy of Sciences, was read; then a biographical notice
of Denon, by M. de Pastoret, of the Academy of Fine Arts. M. Wallon
next read a fragment on the right of asylum awarded to runaway slaves
in antiquity, and attempted to prove that a similar disposition to help
such fugitives exists in the United States at the present day. Finally,
a poem, sent by M. Ampere, was read, and received with a great deal of
applause.
* * * * *
An interesting work on the war in the Vendée, in 1793, is now published
at Paris, by M. FRANÇOIS GRILLE, himself a native of the region, and
an eye-witness of some of the most terrible scenes of that sanguinary
struggle. He is a republican, and naturally takes a somewhat different
view from that of Madame de la Rochejaquelin's Memoirs. Indeed, he
corrects explicitly several geographical and historical errors into
which she has fallen. He writes with vivacity and clearness, and has
made a conscientious study of a great variety of materials hitherto
unused. The first volume of the book has alone appeared: the others
will follow with all possible expedition.
* * * * *
M. FRANCIS LACOMBE is the author of a newly-published _Histoire de la
Bourgeoisie de Paris_, from its origin to the present day. The subject
is one of great interest, and M. Lacombe has well employed the most
extensive materials in treating it. His work extends to three pretty
large octavo volumes. (Paris, 1851.)
* * * * *
During the autumn of 1849, the French government formed from among the
members of the Institute, a commission whose duty was to select from
the reports and communications made to the government by scientific
travellers, what should appear of value to the world at large, for
publication at the public expense, in monthly parts, under the title
of _Archives des Missions Scientifiques et Littéraires_. The work was
at once commenced and the volume for 1850 is completed; of the volume
for 1851, not more than three or four parts have yet appeared. In this
volume are reports by Emil Burnouf on the Propylae, the Pnyx and the
Copaic Lake; by M. Bendit of a Journey among the Grecian Islands; by
Lottin de Leval of an expedition to the Peninsula of Sinai to take
impressions of the inscriptions in the valleys of Sinai and Serval; by
M.H. Revier of an excursion in Algeria to collect Roman inscriptions;
M. Battier de Bourville has an interesting account of the result of an
expedition from Benghazi on the coast of Tripoli, to Cyrene, where he
made some excavations and dug up several fine statues and remarkable
inscriptions; M. Ducouret repeats at length the story of tailed men
in the interior of Africa, but his veracity is uncommonly doubtful,
and his previous travels in countries more familiar have been utterly
fruitless; Mariette's report of his journey to Egypt, in which he
discovered the Serapeum of Memphis, is particularly interesting. He is
a man of uncommon energy and persistence, and almost lost his life in
the affair. He was sick four weeks with fevers and ophthalmia, in the
desert, where the Egyptian officials refused him water and provisions,
so that the wonder is he did not die. The Assembly has voted 30,000
francs to dig out the Serapeum, which was covered with sand in Pliny's
time, and will now be found exactly in its antique condition. Mariette
is now there, and at the last advices had excavated five hundred
different objects in bronze besides twelve sphinxes in granite. Very
many travellers have been sent out to collect documents bearing upon
the history of France, and a full account of their labors is contained
in this volume. M. de Maslatire has been twice to Cyprus to obtain
materials for the history of French rule in that island, and the
result will presently appear in two quarto volumes at the cost of the
treasury. Several travellers have been sent to England for documents
on French history, where it seems they are almost inexhaustibly
abundant, especially those that relate to the middle ages. The reports
of M. Descloiseaux, who was sent to Iceland to study its geological
formation; of M. Visquenel who went to Asiatic Turkey to examine the
soil and products; of MM. Milne, Edwards and Quatrefages, who went to
Sicily to examine the molluscs and annelids of the neighboring seas;
and of Dr. Grange, who was sent throughout Europe to study cretinism
and goitre, are very valuable scientifically. Dr. Grange finds the
cause of those diseases in water containing magnesia, but no iodine.
These travels are undertaken by means of a fund provided for that
purpose by the government. The plan of each expedition is first
submitted to the Institute and approved. In case of very expensive
undertakings, like the excavation of the Serapeum, or the expedition
lately sent to Babylon, a special appropriation is obtained from the
Assembly. The _Archives_ are published neatly, with the necessary
engravings, at twelve francs a year.
* * * * *
The mystery hanging over the interior of Africa is rapidly dissipating
before the zeal of the many explorers whose efforts are now devoted to
traversing the centre of that continent, and, before many years have
passed, there is reason to suppose, this sole remaining geographical
and ethnographic problem will be fully solved. The English expeditions
from the Cape of Good Hope, the German missionaries on the eastern
coast, with their journeys into the highlands in the south of
Abyssinia, the explorations of the English on the gold coast and up
the Niger, those of the French starting from Senegal and Algiers, the
travels of Knoblecher and others on the upper Nile, with the journeys
of Richardson, Barth, and Overweg, must soon make us acquainted with
the principal facts that have so long been the object of general
curiosity, if not of exaggerated expectation. Something is also to be
anticipated from the aid of Mohammedan travellers, of whom there are a
great number scattered over the interior of the continent in search of
adventures or with a view to make fortunes. One of these has published,
in Arabic, two works containing his experiences and observations in
Darfur and Waday, both of which have been translated into French by
M. Perron. The second has just appeared at Paris under the title of
_Voyage au Ouaday par Cheykh Mohammed Ibn Omar al Tunisi_, and is
especially valuable, as Waday is a country about which we have before
had little, if any, positive information. It lies south of the great
desert between Timbuctoo and Darfur, and is an extensive country. It
is so far advanced out of the merely savage state, as to have a sort
of administration, an army, and a kind of general regulations for
commerce, which it owes to the influence of Islamism, and to a great
man called Sabun, who lived quite recently, or yet lives, as the chief
ruler of the land. The principal trade is in slaves, who are stolen
in forays among the neighboring tribes on the south, and sold to
caravans going north to Fezzan, or east to Darfur; the other articles
of commerce are ivory, skins, and ostrich feathers. The introduction of
Islamism has put an end to human sacrifices, and rendered the tyranny
of the rulers less bloody, but in other respects it has produced little
social improvement.
The Roman Catholic writers are generally, in Continental Europe,
demanding the suppression of the liberty of discussion, and a
re-establishment of the Inquisition. Mr. BLANC ST. BONNET, one of the
most conspicuous writers of his party, demands that every species of
free thought be discountenanced, and M. BARBEY D'AUREVILLY, in _Les
Prophètes du Passé_, declares that the evil corrupting society is the
pest Liberty; that the church made a fatal error in not burning Luther
in lieu of burning his books; and he concludes that the Inquisition is
a "logical necessity" in every well-constituted state.
* * * * *
The _Journal des Débats_ publishes a long review from the pen of
M. GARDIN DE TASSY, of the _Translation of two unpublished Arabic
Documents_, issued last year by our countryman EDWARD E. SALISBURY,
of Boston. M. de Tassy says: "We must not suppose that in the United
States every body is so absorbed in commerce that nothing else can
possibly be attended to. Science and letters are cultivated with
success, and there are learned men there who rival those of Europe."
The _Translation_ and its author are warmly praised.
* * * * *
M. DE SAULCY is about to publish at Paris his travels in Palestine,
with thirty large engravings of the ancient monuments about Jerusalem,
and thirty of those about the Dead Sea. The so-called Graves of the
Kings will be the subject of thorough discussion. It is also said that
one of them will be reconstructed in the Louvre upon his plan, and a
sarcophagus cover, which he brought with him, used for the purpose. He
has also a Moabitic bas-relief in black basalt: he bought it of the
Arabs on the Dead Sea. If it be indeed what he supposes, it is the only
relic of the sort existing in Europe.
* * * * *
ABBADIE, one of the Ethiopian travellers of that name, who has lately
been so much assailed by other savants as a narrator of his adventures,
is superintending the cutting of a complete font of Ethiopic letters,
at Paris, to be used in printing some two hundred and fifty Ethiopian
manuscripts. They will form four printed volumes, and are said to be
among the most beautiful specimens of chirography ever seen. The other
brother has gone back to Abyssinia again, to resume his geographical
and scientific researches.
* * * * *
There are a great number of French missionaries in Asia and Africa, but
their contributions to literature are trifling, compared with those
of the English, American, and German. Bishop PALLEGOIX, in Siam, has
lately published a Siamese grammar, in Latin, and promises a Lexicon
of the same language. This, and the Cochin-Chinese Lexicon of Bishop
Tabert, are the only works of the kind, by French missionaries, which
we can recall for several years.
* * * * *
The _Westminster Review_, as we have before intimated, has passed into
the hands of the infidel party of England, and it becomes necessary to
warn the public who subscribe for it in the series of republications
by Mr Scott, of its character, and to urge Mr. Scott to select some
other periodical in its place, if it is necessary for the completion
of his contracts to reprint a certain number of such works. There are
a considerable number of charlatans in England and in this country
who, without the natural capacities or the learning necessary to
distinction in any legitimate intellectual pursuits, clothe themselves
in the cast-off and forgotten draperies of French scepticism, and
challenge admiration for the bravery displayed in mocking God, and
ridiculing the most profoundly reasoned and firmly settled convictions
of mankind. It is becoming fashionable among our young and imperfectly
educated magazine and newspaper writers to "pity the weakness" which
receives the Christian religion as it was held by our fathers. The
drivel of which the veriest fools were made ashamed half a century ago,
is revived as if it were a new and immortal flowering of philosophy.
By the wise and thoughtful this sort of stuff is regarded with just
contempt, and with confidence that though it may exist for a while as
scum upon the surface, it will before long sink with kindred filth
to the bottom of the stream. The _Westminster Review_, failing of an
adequate support, was about to be discontinued, when John Chapman,
the infidel publisher, bought it, and John Stuart Mill was engaged
to be its editor. We hope the respectable portion of the American
journals will make haste to disclose its present character; that
Christian parents will no longer receive it into their houses; and that
the characteristic dishonesty of attempting to smuggle writings of
philosophical quacks and mountebanks under a once reputable name, will
have its appropriate reward.
* * * * *
Of ROBERT BURNS, a grandson of the great poet, who has recently
had some difficulties with the Rajah Sir James Brooke, the London
_Examiner_ says, that he is an adventurous traveller; that he has
mastered two of the languages of Borneo; that he has penetrated farther
into that great and little-known island than any other European; that
he has written by far the best and most authentic account of it in the
_Journal of the Archipelago_, that has ever been given to the public.
* * * * *
The several volumes of essays, entitled, _Companions of my Solitude,
Friends in Council, Essays Written during the Intervals of Business_,
&c., are now announced to be by a Mr. HELPS. Most of them have been
republished in this country, and much read here. They are agreeable and
sensible, but without any very original or striking qualities to give
them a permanent place in literature.
Among the English announcements made in the last month are, _Personal
Recollections of Mary Russell Mitford_ and _Anecdotes of Her Literary
Acquaintances; Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham_, from original
letters and documents, by the Earl of ALBEMARLE; several new books on
the war in Affghanistan; _The Convent and the Harem_, by the Countess
PISANI; _Pictures of Life in Mexico_, by R. H. MASON; _Women of Early
Christianity_, by Miss KAVANAGH; _Hippolytus and his Age, or, Doctrine
and Practice of the Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander
Severus_, by the Chevalier BUNSEN; _China during the War and since
the Peace_, including Translations of Secret State Papers, by Sir J.
F. DAVIS; _Sketches of English Literature_, by Mrs. C. L. BALFOUR;
_Symbols and Emblems of Early and Midiæval Christian Art_, by LOUISA
TWINING; a new work by Dr. LAYARD, entitled _Fresh Discoveries at
Nineveh, and Researches at Babylon_; a new work by Sir FRANCIS HEAD,
with the facetious title, _All my Eye; Some Account of the Danes and
Northmen, in England, Scotland, and Ireland_, by J. J. A. WORSAAE, of
Copenhagen; _An Illustrated Classical Mythology and Biography_, by Dr.
WILLIAM SMITH; _Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata_,
by Sir WOODBINE PARISH; and two new volumes of GROTE'S _History of
Greece_.
* * * * *
The English Dissenters have recently established a new college. It
is the result of a union of three existing similar institutions, at
present belonging to the Independents--namely, Coward, Homerton, and
Cheshunt Colleges; and it is anticipated, from such a concentration of
Nonconformist resources and energies, that the standard of learning
among them will be raised still higher than it is at present, though it
is not now below that in the established church, which, controlling the
great universities, is pleased not to admit that a man may understand
Greek or Mathematics unless he subscribes to the thirty-nine articles.
* * * * *
SIR CHARLES LYELL, lately, in an _Address to the Geological Society_,
demolished again the paltry affair which for some time has constituted
the main artillery of the atheists, _The Vestiges of Creation_; and
_The Leader_ thereupon declares that, "In proportion as any branch of
inquiry rises out of mere _details_ into the _higher generalizations_
which alone constitute science, we find our scientific men, with rare
exceptions, _pitiably incompetent_."
* * * * *
"CHRISTOPHER NORTH" (Professor Wilson), has been compelled by ill
health to make arrangements for dispensing with the delivery of his
lectures on moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, at the
ensuing session. The great poet, philosopher, critic, sportsman, and
humorist, is in the sixty-third year of his age.
* * * * *
The _Evening Book_, by Mrs. KIRKLAND (Charles Scribner), is a very
tasteful volume, consisting of some of the cleverest compositions of
one of our very cleverest literary women, well known as Mrs. Mary
Clavers, the prose poetess, and pen-painter of Western life. From
our first acquaintance with Mary Clavers, in the world of print, we
have admired, almost equally, her frank independence of word and
thought, her free and fearless love of truth, her facility in vivid and
life-like portraiture, and her natural strain of good-natured humor.
But most of all we have admired her, for that she is "an 'author,' _yet
a woman too_!" a consummation indeed devoutly to be wished; inasmuch as
it seems to us, that we are fast falling upon days which will induce
the grave spectator, looking upon the ladies and gentlemen of _Young
New-York_, the former in the rostrum, the latter in the ball-room, to
exclaim with the Persian King at Salamis, "All our men have become
women, and our women _men_." This, however, can never be predicated of
our friend of "the New Home;" and yet, shall we confess it, we like
her better far in the broad west than on the Broad _pavé_; better in
the solitude of the great woods than on the society of great cities;
better in the log school-house, than in the tumultuous streets--in a
word, better as the chronicler of the doings of the west, than as the
critic of the goings-on in the east! So long as she adheres to the
former, she is ever entertaining, ever instructive, ever humorous,
ever lively, ever true; but when she comes to deal with the problems
of society, when she dives into the mysteries of _caste_, and tempts
the difficulties which lie in the way of those who would reconcile
political equality with social intercourse, we fear that she will not
only be found herself going astray, but--what is far worse--becoming
a blind guide to others. We are led to these remarks especially by a
certain article on "Streets and Servants, at home and abroad," the
tendency of which we fully believe--though we are sure it was honestly
written, and beneficently intended--to be positively dangerous and
injurious to the very class for whose advantage it is intended.
Herein we find our fair friend discoursing thus of the female servants
of America:
"Perhaps, if we could make up our minds to treat our servants
as fellow-citizens now, the time when they would be disposed to
shake off our service might be deferred."
And again--
"Would it be dangerous to recognize the soul of a chambermaid?
Would it not be apt to make her a better one, and longer
content with the broom and duster, if we consulted her
feelings, expressed an interest in her welfare, and saved
her pride as much as possible? At present, it seems to be
supposed that in the agreement as to wages, a certain amount of
contumely is bargained for," &c., &c.
Now this is quite unworthy of Mrs. Kirkland's good sense; it is very
objectionable and injurious at this moment--when tens of thousands of
American girls are daily all but starving on the wretched pittance
which they can earn at the literally starving prices of the shops;
daily falling into vice and infamy in order to avoid actual starvation;
who might be comfortably lodged, comfortably clad, comfortably fed,
and well paid, in as many kindly and Christian families, if they
could but condescend from their ruinous false pride, and brook to
become servants. Worst of all, it is not _true_. In no country on
earth are servants so well looked to, not only as to wants but as to
comforts, as in this. In no other are their labors so light, their
liberties so large, their remuneration so liberal, their feelings
so freely consulted--nay, in many cases, their whims so foolishly
indulged. To no contumely, that we can perceive, are they subjected;
but we suppose that Mrs. Kirkland regards their non-admission to
our tables, our conversational _reunions_, or our ballrooms, as the
crowning contumely--quite forgetful that the restraint of what to
refined, educated, and highly-bred persons are habits, would be to
the servant-girl bonds and fetters of intolerable restraint--that her
inability to mix in our conversation, to see with our eyes, taste with
our tastes, and understand with our cultivated intellects, would render
our society far more insufferable and annoying to her than her presence
could be to us; in a word, that, but for the false pride of being
_one of the company_, our drawing-room would be far more a place of
punishment to her, than her kitchen to us.
For the rest, in these United States, all this talk about independence
and servitude is absurd. No man on earth is, or ever will be,
independent of some other man. Every man is, in some sort or other, the
servant of some other man. The rich man is dependent on his colored
barber, or his colored _boots_, for his comfort, as the barber or the
boots is on him for his wages; and perhaps the rich man would be worse
put to it by the absence of the boots, than the boots by the absence of
the rich man. Generally, we believe, the higher we are in position, the
more masters we have to serve, and the less considerate; and we have
little doubt that even our brilliant and gentle authoress herself has
more and less amiable behests to obey, than ever fell to the lot of the
independent help, who "_thought she heard her yell_."
We have dwelt longer on this point than its weight or merit, as regards
the volume, of which it occupies but a page, would seem to justify; and
we have done so not ill-naturedly, to pick out the one tare from the
load of wheat, but merely to controvert what we consider a dangerous
social fallacy, which is growing and gaining virulence and vigor under
false treatment, and producing serious detriment to a large class
of our population. The volume itself is, as we have observed, an
entertaining, an instructive, emphatically a good one; and its getting
up and embellishment reflect as much credit on the publishers, as its
contents on the author. It is one of the most beautiful, and deserves
to be one of the most popular, gift-books of the season.
* * * * *
Among the most agreeable republications of the season we may cite
Mrs. LEE'S _Luther and his Times_, the _Life and Times of Cranmer_,
and the _Historical Sketches of the Old Painters_, recently issued in
the Family Library of Willis Hazard, of Philadelphia. _Luther and his
Times_ appears at an appropriate period, considering the great number
of works relating to the Reformer which have been written in England
and on the continent: scarce any of which, however, are superior
to this, either in accuracy or general interest. As an appropriate
companion to it we have Cranmer--a plain, straightforward, and withal
extremely attractive account of the Reformation in England. With
regard to the relative excellence of these, we incline to the Luther.
The simplicity and singleness of style which characterize Mrs. Lee's
biography of Cranmer, would render it peculiarly the property of
the young, were it not that the great amount of valuable historical
information which it contains, as well as the fact that so little
is generally known relative to the early history of the English
Reformation, commend it equally to the perusal of older and graver
students. But in the Luther, we have, in the best sense, a _literary_
work, one in which ease of style, an almost romantic interest and
accurate research, combine to invest it with that variety of excellence
which the public taste at the present day requires of the historian
and biographer. The works are neatly got up, with fair illustrations.
In the same series we also find an illustrated edition of _The Vicar
of Wakefield_. A curious proof of the exquisite simplicity and beauty
of style which characterize this work, may be found in the fact, that
throughout Germany, Scandinavia, and Italy, no English work is so well
known or so extensively used in the study of our language.
Few American works have conferred on their writers a more respectable
reputation than Mrs. LEE'S _Historical Sketches of the Old Painters_.
When we reflect on the important _rôle_ which a knowledge of Art plays
in a modern education, and that the time is evidently not distant when
the _Æsthetics_ will form as essential a portion of school courses as
French or Algebra, we cannot be too grateful to one who has prepared
such an eminently practical yet agreeable introduction to such studies.
To the general reader who lacks the time or patience to work his way
through the interminable works of Vasari, Kugler, or Lanzi, and who can
be satisfied with an account of the most eminent painters, narrated in
a concise yet highly interesting manner, this work must be invaluable.
We have looked over an edition of YOUNG'S _Night Thoughts_, edited by
JAMES ROBERT BOYD, and published by Mr. Scribner. It reminds us of
that edition of Milton, by some eastern gentleman (there is a copy in
the Harvard College library), in which "the versification is somewhat
improved, and for better effect a few new figures are put in here and
there." Except that memorable specimen of editorial silliness and
sacrilege, we must confess--nay, we gladly confess--that we have never
seen or heard of any thing worse than this very handsomely printed
edition of Young's _Night Thoughts_. As the respectable publisher of it
must have supposed Mr. Boyd possessed of some qualifications for the
task undertaken by him, we will be a little more particular than is
our wont, and convince him, and convince that part of the public which
reads this magazine, that Mr. Boyd's edition of Young is an unendurable
imposition. Dr. Young was a writer of singular naturalness of feeling
and simplicity of style. As has frequently been observed of his works,
lacking the romantic passion and fiery impulse which would commend them
most to the tastes of middle life, they are the chosen companions of
youth and age. There has scarcely ever been a poet who so little needed
annotation; his "great argument," indeed, sometimes might be more
easily apprehended if a little simplified by a clear-headed schoolman,
but his verbal transparency is such that he needs, in this respect, no
tinkering whatever. Yet Mr. Boyd makes nearly half his book of notes,
and of notes, too, in which the great purpose of the poem is never
touched--notes composed of mere platitudes, as useless, meaningless,
and ridiculous, as would be the repetition of Swift's "nonsense verses"
in the margin of every page. We copy at random a few examples:
I wake: how happy they who wake no more!
NOTE. "_I wake._" This expression suggested to the poet the
expressive contrast, "How happy they who wake no more."
A mind that fain would wander from its woe.
NOTE. _Fain_: gladly.
Teach my best reason, reason; my best will
Teach rectitude.
NOTE. _Teach_, &c. Teach my best reason what is reasonable:
cause the best actings of my intellectual powers to be more
strictly conformed to what is reasonable, true, and fit.
We take no note of Time
But from its loss: to give it then a tongue.
NOTE. _To give it then a tongue._ To cause time to speak to us!
Here teems with revolutions every hour.
NOTE. _Here_, &c. On this earth every hour teems with
revolutions!
I would not damp, but to secure, thy joys.
NOTE. _But to secure_, &c. But with a view to secure thy joys!
No moment, but in purchase of its worth.
NOTE. _Of its worth_: Of something equally valuable!
Nature, in zeal for human amity.
NOTE. _In zeal for human amity_: In the exercise of zeal for
encouraging human friendship!
And so on through all the book--scarcely any thing but these miserable
puerilities. There cannot be a child in the world to whom the poet's
meaning would not be as plain from the text, as from such notes. In
other cases, where the author is perfectly plain to nearly the meanest
apprehensions, Mr. Boyd himself cannot understand him; for instance:
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields, or mourned along the gloom
Of pathless woods, or, down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled flood.
The obvious idea in these last lines is, that, hurled down into a
pool, battlemented, or _mantled_ about, he swam with pain, seeing no
egress up the craggy or precipitous rocks: a use of the word "mantled,"
which is justified by instances in many of the best ancient and modern
writers. But Mr. Boyd reduces the lines to the poorest stuff by the
following
NOTE. _Mantled_: Expanded, spread out, as a mantle.
An instance of his prosaic feebleness occurs on page 86.
Thought, busy thought, too busy for my peace.
Through the dark postern of long time elapsed,
Led softly, by the stillness of the night....
In quest of wretchedness perversely strays,
And finds all desert now, and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys, a numerous train.
NOTE. _Ghosts of my departed days_: The bare recollection of
them!
This is a new exhibition of the "art of sinking." The whole commentary
suggests the idea of making a noble poem contemptible, by covering it
over with diminutive conceits and bungling impertinences.
* * * * *
"INJUSTICE TO THE SOUTH," is everywhere a fruitful subject of
discussion. In politics, in religion, in letters, our friends beyond
Washington will not believe us in the North capable of treating them
with fairness. In literature we have constantly heard it alleged that
success should never be dreamed of by an author who had the misfortune
to be born the wrong side of Mason and Dixon's line. The superstition
is not without its uses. It affords abundant consolation to a vast
number of young gentleman whose books produce no profits. Yet we are
inclined to believe it is altogether without any foundation in reason;
that _The Scarlet Letter_ would have been as popular from Charleston
as from Concord. We have an amusing illustration of the feeling on
this point, in the last _Southern Literary Messenger_. The amiable and
eminently accomplished editor of that work counts among his personal
friends as many northern gentlemen as have had ever opportunity to know
him, yet he honestly believes us incapable of appreciating the genius
of a poet from one of the tobacco, sugar, or cotton states. Introducing
some pretty verses entitled _The Marriage of the Sun and Moon_, "by the
late H. S. Ellenwood, of North Carolina," into his last number, he says:
"Had the gifted author been a native of Massachusetts, his
name would be familiar as household words; as it is, we doubt
whether one in ten of our readers has ever heard of it."
He _was_ a native of Massachusetts. His original name was Small, and he
was born in Salem, in the year of grace 1790; at sixteen apprenticed
to J. T. Buckingham, of Boston; at twenty-one had his name changed
to H. S. Ellenwood; in 1820 emigrated to North Carolina; and on the
2d of April, 1843, he died, in Wilmington, in that state, having
just established there the _Daily Advertiser_. We suspect that, in
literature at least, all charges of "injustice to the South," are as
ill founded as this.
The _American Gift Books_ for the present season surpass any hitherto
published, both as regards literature and art. The _Home Book of the
Picturesque_, published by Mr. Putnam, is the finest combination of
all needful qualities for such a work, that has ever appeared in the
English language. The late Fenimore Cooper (of whose admirable article
we publish a large portion in preceding pages), Miss Susan Fenimore
Cooper, Washington Irving, W. C. Bryant, N. P. Willis, Alfred B.
Street, Bayard Taylor, and Dr. Bethune, are among the contributors, and
Durand, Huntington, Cole, Cropsey, &c., furnish pictures, from the most
striking, beautiful, and least-known scenery in America. The publishers
of the world do not this year furnish a volume more admirable. The
_Book of Home Beauty_, containing exquisitely engraved portraits of
some of the most distinguished women in American society, by Charles
Martin, with letter-press by Mrs. Kirkland, is another fine quarto;
and _The Memorial_, an octavo, written by Nathanael Hawthorne, N. P.
Willis, G. P. R. James, R. B. Kimball, Dr. Mayo, W. G. Simms, Mrs.
Hewitt, Mrs. Oakes Smith, and others, is very much above any "Keepsake"
or "Souvenir" ever before printed in England or in America.
* * * * *
We have new volumes of Poems, by Messrs. LONGFELLOW, BAYARD TAYLOR, and
R. H. STODDARD, from the press of Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, of which
appropriate notices are deferred until the next month.
* * * * *
MESSRS. APPLETON have a series of works, equally remarkable for
typographical and pictorial magnificence and literary interest.
_Christmas with the Poets_ is admitted to be, on the whole, the most
admirably executed production of the printing press; _The Women of
Early Christianity_, written by eminent authors, and edited by the Rev.
Mr. Spencer, presents attractively the domestic romance of religious
history, with seventeen very excellent engravings, making an imperial
octavo, in the style of that remarkably popular series, the _Women of
the Bible_, the _Women of the Old and New Testament_, and _Our Saviour
with Prophets and Apostles_, all of which are now published in styles
to suit the cabinet of art, the drawing-room table, or the library.
Another very interesting and richly illustrated work from this house
is _The Land of Bondage_, by Dr. Wainwright, corresponding with the
same author's splendid volume, _The Pathways and Abiding Places of
Our Lord_. The Appletons also publish for the coming holidays Mrs.
Jameson's most successful work, the _Beauties of the Court of Charles
the Second_, with twenty-one finely engraved portraits, and _The Queens
of England_, by Agnes Strickland, with eighteen portraits--a work of
which the fame is as extensive as a love of art or an admiration of
woman; and _Lyrics of the Heart_, a very finely illustrated collection
of the poems of Alaric A. Watts. The other illustrated works from
this house are enumerated in the advertising pages at the end of this
magazine, to which we ask attention.
The Fine Arts.
A series of four compositions representing the Seasons, by CALAME,
a Swiss artist, is highly praised in the _Grenzboten_, as something
altogether original and superior to the technical traditions of the
schools. They were painted for a Russian gentleman, and were exhibited
for a short time in Berlin. Spring is an Italian or Grecian landscape
of the antique world, and the time is morning; Summer is a German scene
and the time noon; Autumn is from the lake country of Switzerland and
the time late afternoon; Winter is a late evening scene with moonlight.
* * * * *
MR. HARDING'S noble full-length of _Daniel Webster_--the best work of
its class ever engraved in this country--may now be purchased at two
dollars and a half per copy, of Sherman & Adriance, Astor House.
* * * * *
The celebrated _Portrait of Bishop White_, painted by Henry Inman, and
engraved in London, by Wagstaff, is now published from the original
plate, by Andrews and Meeser, of Philadelphia, at three dollars per
copy. The impressions are quite as good as those first taken, which
were sold for four times as large a price.
* * * * *
NORWEGIAN Peasant Life, is the subject of ten pictures by ADOLPH
TIEDEMANN, which a year since excited very general admiration at
Düsseldorf. They have now been lithographed and published in that
place, with explanatory text in German and Norwegian.
* * * * *
LEUTZE'S _Washington Crossing the Delaware_, is universally conceded to
be the best painting in the world, illustrating American history. Its
production marks an era in American art. The exhibition of it, at the
Stuyvesant Institute, is, of course, successful.
* * * * *
KAULBACH'S frescoes in the New Museum at Berlin are to be engraved. The
Prussian bookseller Duncker has undertaken the speculation, and intends
that the engravings shall exceed everything yet done in Germany; not
merely the pictures, but all the ornamental designs will be included.
* * * * *
The German papers announce that a colossal statue of Washington is
casting at Munich. It is to be twenty feet higher than the famous
Bavaria, and is destined for this country. Several other historical
sculptures are in preparation for the United States.
Historical Review of the Month.
On the 4th of November the state election in New York resulted in the
choice of all but two of the democratic candidates, and the defeat of
the whigs on the great question respecting the canals. The closeness
of the vote may be inferred from the majorities: For _Controller_,
Wright over Patterson 527; _Secretary of State_, Randall over Forsyth
1420; _Treasurer_, Cook (whig) over Welch, 64; _Attorney General_,
Chatfield over Ullmann, 294; _Canal Commissioner_, Fitzhugh (whig)
over Wheaton, 745; _State Engineer_, McAlpine over Seymour, 2390.
In New Jersey, on the same day, a large majority of the legislature
was elected by the democrats. In Delaware, on the same day, it was
determined to hold a convention for revising the constitution of the
state, by 2,129 majority. In Louisiana, on the 3d, the whigs carried
the legislature, and gained one member of Congress (Moore over Morse).
In Wisconsin the whigs have elected Farwell, their candidate for
Governor, and a majority of the legislature. Maryland, on the 5th, the
entire democratic ticket, for comptroller, register, &c., was elected,
with a majority of the legislature. In Michigan, the same day, the
democrats, as usual, carried nearly every thing. In Massachusetts,
on the 10th, there was a failure to elect a governor, but numerous
vacancies to be filled in the legislature, it is supposed at this time
(20th), will enable the whigs to succeed in that body. The vote was the
largest ever thrown in the State. In Mississippi, Mr. Foote's majority
is about 1500. In Tennessee, ex-Governor James C. Jones (whig), was
elected to the United States Senate on the 14th. In Georgia, the new
legislature assembled on the 3d, Governor Cobb was inaugurated on the
5th, and Mr. Toombs, now representative in Congress, was chosen United
States Senator on the 10th. He is a Southern Rights Whig Unionist, and
succeeds Mr. Burrien.
A correspondence has taken place between the Spanish minister at
Washington and the Secretary of State, which, it is understood, assures
a settlement of the difficulties arising from the invasion of Cuba; but
additional discontent has been occasioned by the arrest, imprisonment,
trial, and sentence (on the 12th of November), at Havana, of an
American citizen, John G. Thrasher, for "disloyalty," to eight years
hard labor in a Spanish fortress. Mr. Thrasher is a native of Maine,
and had been for several years editor of the _Faro Industrial_, at
Havana.
Judge Kane, in the Circuit Court of Pennsylvania, has given his
decision in the Telegraph Case, sustaining Morse's pretensions
throughout, and against Bain. The decision is in favor of Morse on
all points, and establishes that he is solely entitled to the art of
instantaneously recording messages at a distance. The case will now go
to the Supreme Court, with probably the same result.
The great Methodist Episcopal Church case was decided on the 11th of
November, in the United States District Court, in favor of the Southern
claimants. The sum in dispute was $750,000--being the amount at which
the Book Concern of the Society is estimated--and the decision gives to
the Methodist Church South its proportion of this property.
In the United States District Court, at Philadelphia, on the 7th
November, the Grand Jury presented seventy-eight indictments against
thirty-nine of the participants in the riot at Christiana. Each of the
accused is charged with high treason.
Efforts for the separation of California into new states are vigorously
prosecuted. The latest intelligence from the mines is favorable. Oregon
will probably come into the Union as two states.
There have been a great number of fatal accidents in the last few
weeks, of which we can give but the results in loss of lives:
_Lives._
Propeller Henry Clay, lost on Lake Erie, October 23, 30
Steamer Buckeye run into a sloop, Lake Erie, same day, 3
Steamer William Penn, off Cape Cod, struck sloop, same day, 4
Ship Oregon, sunk at sea lat. 36-1/2, long. 69-1/2, October 27, 3
Schooner Christiana, capsized, Lake Ontario, about the same time, 9
Schooner William Penn, lost about the same time, _Entire crew._
Embankment fell in at Spencerport, N. Y., November 11, 3
Accident at the Pyrotechnic establishment, Flatbush, November 3, 2
Cotton Factory, Philadelphia, burned November 12, 6
Small boat run down by a schooner, Boston Harbor, November 5, 3
Railroad engine-boiler, burst at Aiken, S.C., November 14, 3
Collision on the New-York and New Haven Railroad, October 25, 2
Alarm of fire, in Public School, No. 26, in New-York, causing a rush
of children toward the great stairway, of which the railing gave
way, November 20, 46
On the 21st October, a serious difficulty broke out at Chagres, between
the American and native boatmen, and a battle ensued, which resulted
in the death of two Americans, and as many natives. After two days'
disturbance, the affair was adjusted, and order restored.
In Mexico, for the present, the insurrection of Caravajal has failed,
and the siege of Matamoras has been abandoned. In New Grenada the
Jesuit revolt under Borrero has been put down and Borrero captured.
From Buenos Ayres we learn that General Oribe has been overthrown, and
that Rosas is in the utmost danger, but the results of recent important
events there are not yet well understood.
Little has occurred in Great Britain, of much importance, except the
demonstrations occasioned by the arrival of Kossuth, at Southampton,
on the 23d of October. The Hungarian chief has been received with
unparalleled enthusiasm in Southampton, London, Manchester, and
elsewhere, and in many long and powerful speeches has vindicated his
great reputation for wisdom and for honest devotion to the liberties
of his country. He was to leave England in the steamer Washington, for
New-York, on the 14th November, and will probably have arrived here
before this paragraph is published. In the United States a triumph even
more enthusiastic than that in England awaits him. The Caffre war in
South Africa is still extending, and the British forces have obtained,
in no case, decided or important advantages.
The attention of Europe is more than ever concentrated on France.
Louis Napoleon, who had deprived the nation of the right of suffrage,
in despair of reëlection by any other means finally determined on the
abrogation of the restricting law of the 31st of May; his ministers
resigned; after a considerable period a new ministry, with little
weight of personal character, was formed; and on the 4th of November
the new session of the French Legislative Assembly was opened in Paris,
to receive the President's Message, and at once to vote down its
cardinal recommendations. The world watching with deep interest that
conflict of the factions in France which must be brought to a close
with the present term of her unscrupulous ruler.
Recent Deaths.
ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER, D.D., LL. D., late Professor of Theology in the
Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Princeton, in New Jersey, was
born on the 17th of April, 1772, on the banks of a small tributary of
the James River, called South River, and near the western foot of the
Blue Ridge, in that part of Augusta County, Virginia, which has since,
from the great natural curiosity it contains, been named Rockbridge.
He was descended by both parents from Presbyterians of Scotland, who
emigrated first to Ireland, and thence to America. He was educated at
Liberty Hall Academy, which has since become Washington College, under
the instructions of the founder of that institution, Rev. William
Graham, an able and eminent preacher and professor. Besides Mr. Graham,
his classical teachers were James Priestly, afterward President of
Cumberland College, Tennessee, and Archibald Roane, afterward Governor
of Tennessee. In the summer of 1789, he joined in the full communion
of the church, and commenced the study of theology under Mr. Graham,
who had a class of six or eight students. He was licensed to preach by
this Presbytery of Lexington, October 1, 1791, and was ordained on the
5th of May, 1795. Part of the intervening years he spent in itinerant
labors in Virginia, and in that region which is now Ohio. In the spring
of 1797 he became President of Hampden Sydney College, in the County
of Prince Edward, at the same time being pastor of the churches of
Briery and Cumberland. He was now but twenty-five years old, and it
may safely be alleged that there was never won in this country, at so
early an age, a more brilliant or a purer reputation. His arduous and
responsible duties were discharged with industry and energy, equal to
his abilities, until health gave way, and, in the spring of 1801, he
resigned these charges, in well-grounded apprehension of a settled
pulmonary consumption. The summer of 1802 was spent by Mr. Alexander
in travelling on horseback through New England, and by this means he
so far recovered his health as to resume the Presidency of the College
and the charge of his parishes. About the same time he was married to
Janette Waddell, second daughter of Rev. Jonas Waddell, D.D., that
remarkable preacher whose blindness and eloquence have been celebrated
by Mr. Wirt in _The British Spy_. In the Autumn of 1806 he received
a call from the Third Presbyterian Church, at the corner of Pine and
Fourth-sts., in Philadelphia. Though he had declined an invitation to
the same church ten years before, he accepted this, and thus became
a second time the successor of the Rev. John Blair Smith, D.D. He
continued at this post until, in the spring of 1812, he was summoned
by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to be the first
Professor in the Theological Seminary then just founded at Princeton.
This chair, we believe, he occupied until his death--until within a
few weeks, at least, discharging all its honorable duties. It is a
pleasing fact that the first two Professors in this Institution were
associated in its service nearly forty years. During this period a
large number of clergymen have proceeded from the seminary, and it has
now not far from one hundred and fifty students. It is important to
observe that it has no connection with the College of New Jersey, at
the same place. The eminent usefulness of Dr. Alexander is not to be
measured by the long and wise discharge of his duties as a professor.
He was a voluminous, very able and popular writer. In addition to
occasional sermons and discourses, and numerous smaller treatises, he
wrote constantly for _The Princeton Review_, a quarterly miscellany
of literature, and theological and general learning, of the highest
character, which is now in the twenty-seventh year of its publication.
His work on _The Evidences of the Christian Religion_ has passed
through numerous editions in Great Britain as well as in America,
and this, as well as his _Treatise on the Canon of Scripture_, which
has also been republished abroad, we believe, has appeared in two or
three other languages. The substance of the latter has, however, been
incorporated with more recent editions of the former, under the title
of _Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority
of the Holy Scriptures_, of which a fifth edition--the last we have
seen--was published in Philadelphia in 1847. Among his other works are
_Thoughts on Religion; a Compend of Bible Truth_; and a _History of
Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa_--the last an octavo volume
of more than six hundred pages, published in Philadelphia in 1846. His
principal writings, however, have been on practical religion and on the
History and Biography of the Church, and these for the most part have
been published anonymously. Dr. Alexander was the father of six sons,
of whom three are clergymen. The eldest, James W. Alexander, D.D., for
several years Professor in the College of New Jersey, and sometime
Pastor of the Duane-street Church in this city, is a fine scholar and
an able preacher, and has enrolled himself among the benefactors of
the people by many writings of the highest practical value designed
to elevate the condition of the laboring classes to the true dignity
of citizenship and a Christian life. Another is Rev. Joseph Addison
Alexander, D.D., Professor of Oriental Literature in the Theological
Seminary at Princeton, and author of the well-known works on the
Earlier and the Later Prophecies of Isaiah. He is generally regarded as
one of the most profound and sagacious scholars of the present age. The
late venerable Professor was undoubtedly one of those who, by the union
of a most Christian spirit and a faultless life to great abilities,
have been deserving of the praise of doing most for the advancement of
true religion.
* * * * *
DR. J. KEARNEY ROGERS, for a long time one of the most able and
respected physicians and surgeons of New-York, died on the 9th of
November. He was born in New-York in 1793, graduated at Princeton in
1811, studied medicine in Edinburgh, London, and Paris, and returning
to New York was the friend and associate of Dr. Post, Dr. Hossack, Dr.
Francis, Dr. Delafield, and other eminent members of his profession,
in establishing medical and surgical institutions, &c. He has left no
writings in print or MS. for the public.
* * * * *
The Rev. WILLIAM CROSWELL, D.D., Rector of the Church of the Advent,
in Boston, died in that city very suddenly, on the evening of Sunday,
November 9, having preached and administered the sacrament of baptism
during the day. Dr. Croswell was born in New-Haven, Connecticut, on
the 7th of November, 1804, was the son of the Rev. Dr. Croswell of
that city, and was educated at Yale College, where he was graduated
in the summer of 1824. He was subsequently, for two years, associated
with Dr. DOANE, now Bishop of New Jersey, in the editorship of the
_Episcopal Watchman_ at Hartford, after which he removed to Boston, and
was for several years minister of Christ's Church, in that city. He
then became rector of St. Peter's, in Auburn, New York, and at length
returned to Boston, where his numerous warm friends gladly welcomed his
settlement as minister of the Church of the Advent. Dr. Croswell was a
scholar, and possessed a fine taste in literature, with very unusual
powers as a writer. Among his poems, are many of remarkable grace and
sweetness, and a few evincing a happy vein of satire. His poems are
nearly all religious, and Bishop DOANE, in a note to his edition of
Keble's "Christian Year," remarks that "he has more unwritten poetry in
him" than any man he knows. We hope Bishop Doane will commemorate his
friendship, and the genius and virtues of Dr. Croswell, in a memoir,
and collection of his works.
* * * * *
DR. GRANVILLE SHARPE PATTISON, an eminent teacher of anatomy, died
in New York, after a short illness, on the 12th of November, in the
sixty-first year of his age. He was born near Glasgow, in Scotland,
where his father was a cotton spinner, and was educated in that city,
studying surgery under the late eminent Professor John Burns. On
obtaining his degree, he commenced the practice of his profession in
Glasgow, with prospects of eminent success, and soon became one of the
surgeons of the Andersonian Institution, and a lecturer on anatomy. An
unfortunate domestic affair, of which the details may be learned from
the report of a trial which resulted in the divorce of Prof. Andrew
Ure from his wife, in 1819, caused Dr. Pattison to come to the United
States. He settled in Baltimore, where he resumed his profession as
a lecturer on anatomy; and, going afterwards to England, he became a
professor in the medical school connected with the London University.
He continued but a short time in England, and on returning to this
country he accepted the place of Professor of Anatomy in the Jefferson
Medical College in Philadelphia, which he filled successfully until
1840, when he was made Professor of Anatomy in the Medical School
connected with the New-York University--an office which he held until
his death, having delivered his last lecture but a week before that
event. Dr. Pattison was a man of fine social qualities, and was one
of the best lecturers in this country. His published writings display
the best capacities for his vocation--are shrewd, judicious, and
happily delivered--but for the most part fragmentary. His editions of
Cruveilhier's _Anatomy of the Human Body_, Mase's _Anatomical Atlas_,
and other works, are well known, and he wrote many important papers in
the American Medical Recorder, besides several pamphlets of a personal
character.
* * * * *
MR. STEPHENS, the author of "Martinuzzi," and the "Manuscripts of
Erdely," died on the 8th of October, in Camden-town. He was in his
fifty-first year, and, in early life, had produced several tragic
dramas that commanded the attention of critics, both foreign and
native. Schlegel abroad, and "minor Beddoes" at home, praised his
tragedies of "Montezuma" and the "Vampire;" and, at a later period, his
"Gertrude and Beatrice" excited, among the few who take an interest in
dramatic poetry, great admiration. His last work consisted of "Dramas
for the Stage," in two volumes, but it was only privately circulated.
Mr. Stephens' dramatic poetry was distinguished by intense passion and
fervor; but at the early part of his career, he lacked the constructive
power. Finding that the stage monopoly, so long existing, was an
effectual bar to the higher original drama being produced, he joined,
about the year 1841, a guild of zealous literary young men, who were
bent on doing something towards theatrical reform. Mrs. Warner and
Mr. Phelps united themselves to these dramatic aspirants; and the
result was, that the Lyceum Theatre was taken for a month, for the
performance of a new five-act tragedy, notwithstanding the existing
law to the contrary. The tragedy was licensed as an opera in three
acts, and was at length acted with some of the songs retained. This
retention of musical irrelevancies, in obedience to the law, while it
made the law itself absurd, could not fail of injuring the drama in
which they were introduced; and, had its merits not been extraordinary,
"Martinuzzi," under such circumstances, could not have lived a single
night. As it was, it struggled through the month, making partisans
to the experiment, though at the sacrifice of the author's means
and feelings. Mr. Stephens accepted the martyrdom freely, and went
through it nobly, for the sake of the cause which to his death he held
sacred. Moreover, he would have continued the contest, but that he was
strongly advised to the contrary by Mr. Sheridan Knowles, and Mr. John
A. Heraud, the latter of whom had been actively engaged in getting up
"Martinuzzi," but thought that sufficient demonstration had been made.
In this he was right, as it subsequently proved; for, shortly after,
in conjunction with Mr. Edward Mayhew and some other gentlemen, he was
a party to the drawing up, in committee, of a bill for the liberation
of the stage, the draft of which was forwarded to Sir Robert Peel, who
placed it in the hands of Lord Mahon, by whom it was carried through
Parliament; and thus every theatre was enabled legally to perform the
Shakspearian and five-act drama. Mr. George Stephens himself, sick of
dramatic disappointment, turned his ardent mind into a new channel, and
became involved in railway speculations, and in them lost his fortune.
His latter days were accordingly passed in narrow circumstances,
accompanied with physical prostration quite deplorable. They who had
benefited by his exertions, neglected him. His love for the drama and
power of composition remained uninjured, but encouragement attached
itself to younger candidates. His high principle, determined courage,
personal pride and fortitude, however, continued with him to the last;
and as he was a pious and religious man, he bore suffering and neglect
not only with patience, but with confidence that the good cause in
which he had labored would ultimately prosper.
* * * * *
The celebrated missionary CHARLES GUTZLAFF, of whom we gave an
interesting account in the _International_ last year (vol. i. 317),
died at Canton on the 9th of August, in the forty-eighth year of his
age. He was born on the 8th of July, 1803, at Pyritz, in the Prussian
province of Pomerania, of parents whose very moderate circumstances
prevented them from affording him the education requisite for a
Christian missionary, to become which was his most anxious desire.
After attending for some time the schools of his native town, he was
sent to Stettin as an apprentice to a belt-maker. There he composed
a short poem, in which he expressed his strong religious feelings,
with his hitherto unavailing wishes respecting his career in life,
and which he presented to the king of Prussia, on occasion of a visit
paid by the latter to Stettin, in 1821. The effect of this step was to
procure his admission as a pupil into the missionary institution at
Berlin. Such was the progress which he made in his studies, that only
two years afterwards, in the spring of the year 1823, he was judged
to be sufficiently qualified for the object he had in view. He was
sent to the Dutch Missionary Society at Rotterdam, which appointed him
to be one of their missionaries to the East. But becoming more than
ever sensible of the arduousness of the functions he had undertaken
to perform, he did not venture to embark for his destination until
the month of August, 1826, having devoted himself, in the mean time,
to a further diligent preparation for future usefulness. The first
missionary ground assigned him was in the island of Java. He took up
his residence at Batavia, where he married an English woman who was
possessed of considerable property, and where, by mingling with the
Chinese inhabitants, in the course of two years he acquired so skilful
a use of their language, and became so intimately acquainted with their
modes of life and intercourse with each other, as to be adopted by them
into one of their families, and to have a Chinese name assigned to him.
The circumstances just mentioned produced an important change in his
plans. In the possession, as he now was, of a pecuniary independence,
he resolved to break off his connection with the Dutch missionary
society, and to proceed to China, to preach the gospel to the Chinese
in their own country, to the extent that he might be allowed to do so.
In the first place, however, he accompanied an English missionary,
named Tomlin, to Siam, in the summer of 1828. This journey occupied
Gutzlaff for a period of upwards of three years. Besides laboring
diligently in his vocation as a Christian minister, he composed,
while residing at Bankok, a Siamese grammar, and, in conjunction with
Tomlin, translated the New Testament into the Siamese language. He next
proceeded to China, where, associating himself with Morrison, Medhurst,
and other European missionaries, he selected Macao for his principal
station. He established schools, distributed religious tracts among
the people, assisted in a new translation of the Bible into Chinese,
co-operated with Morrison in founding a society for the diffusion of
useful knowledge in China, published a Chinese Monthly Magazine, and
yet did not neglect, at Macao, and in various excursions made from
that place, the preaching of Christianity to the inhabitants. All this
went on without any hindrance, until Gutzlaff excited the suspicion
of the Chinese authorities of his labors being in some way connected
with the interested views of the English traders; and, in consequence,
an attempt made by him in May, 1835, to penetrate into the province
of Fokien, proved altogether unsuccessful. The printing of Chinese
books of a Christian character was now forbidden; the distribution of
such books was obliged to be suspended; and it became necessary to
remove the printing presses from Macao to Singapore. Thus restricted
in his missionary sphere, Gutzlaff felt himself the more at liberty to
accompany the British expedition against China, and to be exceedingly
serviceable to it by his intimate acquaintance with the language and
customs of the Chinese. He was also an active agent in bringing about
the treaty of peace, concluded between the contending parties in 1842.
His literary labors have had an almost incredible extent and variety.
He himself gives the following enumeration of his writings: "In
Dutch I have written: a History of our Mission and of Distinguished
Missionaries, and an appeal for support of the Missionary Work;
in German: Sketches of the Minor Prophets; in Latin: the Life of
our Savior; in English: Sketches of Chinese History; China Opened;
Life of Kanghe, together with a great number of articles on the
Religion, History, Philosophy, Literature and Laws of the Chinese;
in Siamese: a Translation of the New Testament, with the Psalms,
and an English-Siamese Dictionary, English Cambodian Dictionary and
English-Laos Dictionary. These works I left to my successors to
finish, but with the exception of the Siamese Dictionary they have
added nothing to them. In Cochin-Chinese: a Complete Dictionary of
Cochin-Chinese-English and English-Cochin-Chinese; this work is not
yet printed. In Chinese: Forty Tracts, along with three editions of
the Life of our Savior; a Translation of the New Testament, the third
edition of which I have carried through the press. Of the Translations
of the Old Testament, the Prophets and the two first books of Moses
are completed. In this language I have also written The Chinese
Scientific Monthly Review, a History of England, a History of the Jews,
a Universal History and Geography, on Commerce, a Short Account of the
British Empire and its Inhabitants, as well as a number of smaller
articles. In Japanese: a Translation of the New Testament, and of the
first book of Moses, two tracts, and several scientific pamphlets. The
only paper to which I now send communications is the Hong-Kong Gazette,
the whole Chinese department of which I have undertaken. Till 1842 I
wrote for the Chinese Archives."
The last year Mr. Gutzlaff spent in Europe, and he had recently
completed some important works, to be added to the above list,
respecting Chinese affairs and civilization, one of which is a life
of the late Chinese Emperor, with whom the missionary appears to have
had a more intimate personal acquaintance than was ever yielded to
any other European. The family of Mr. Gutzlaff lately travelled some
time in the United States, where they were well received in religious
circles, and Mr. Gutzlaff himself felt some disappointment that
unlooked-for duties in Germany prevented him from extending his tour to
the Churches and Universities of this country. A careful investigation
will show that his long and faithful labors have had a powerful
influence in favor of Christianity in China.
* * * * *
The once powerful and celebrated Don MANUEL GODOY, Prince of the Peace,
Duke of Alcudia, &c., died in Paris on the 4th of October. He was born
at Badejoz, of a noble family, in 1767, at seventeen years of age he
entered the Royal Guards, and being soon after taken into high favor
by the queen Maria Louisa, of Parma, he became at the end of the last
and beginning of the present century, a prominent actor in the most
important political events of Spain, of which country, for a time, he
was Minister and absolute ruler. His conduct was the proximate cause of
the Spanish war with Napoleon. Prince Ferdinand (afterwards Ferdinand
VII.), tired of the thraldom in which he was kept by his mother and her
Minister, applied for protection to Napoleon; and Godoy, discovering
that he had done so, accused him of a conspiracy to dethrone his
father. This led to the most scandalous scenes. A revolt broke out
at Aranjuez, and Godoy nearly lost his life. Charles IV. abdicated,
and Ferdinand assumed the sceptre, but the Imperial ruler of France
would not permit him to hold it. Napoleon took the crown of Spain
for his own family, and the terrible Peninsular war was the result.
The consequence, meanwhile, to Godoy, was the loss of his wealth and
honors, and his residence in foreign lands for nearly the remainder of
his life. In 1847 the Spanish Minister published a decree, authorizing
Godoy, by his inferior title of Duke of Alcudia, to return to Spain;
and ordering that a certain portion of his once vast property should be
restored. The latter part of the decree was acted upon, however, in the
same manner as such restitution's are generally made in Spain. The only
income of Godoy continued to be an allowance by one of his children.
Whatever may have been the conduct of this singular politician half a
century ago, those who knew him in his old age could not but admire
in him a fine specimen of the Castilian gentleman. To the very last
he was remarkable for the elegance of his manners, and high-bred
courtesy. In conversation he was most agreeable. The world, too, should
be charitable to his memory. Years of embarrassment, exile, poverty,
and obscurity, have done much to atone for the faults committed in a
time of sudden and intoxicating exaltation, and of unbounded power by
him who was then a Prince, Prime Minister, and despot of Spain, but
who has died, with the weight of eighty-seven years upon him, a quiet,
inoffensive, and forgotten man, in a retired lodging at Paris.
* * * * *
GEORGE BAKER, the historian of Northamptonshire, was born and brought
up at Northampton. To him and his gifted sister, Miss Baker, his
native country is deeply indebted. Mr. Baker produced his learned
and comprehensive _History of Northamptonshire_, at great expense of
money and time, and at great loss to himself. The book ranks in the
very first grade of topographical literature, and is remarkable for
the perfection of its genealogical details. Unfortunately, the work is
left unfinished, owing to the ill health of its author and his want of
funds. This amiable and excellent author and man died at Northampton,
on the 12th of October, in his seventy-first year.
* * * * *
M. DE SAVIGNY, member of the Academy of Sciences, and known for his
works on zoology, died in October, at Versailles, at an advanced age.
* * * * *
DR. THOMAS WINGARD, Archbishop of Upsal and Primate of Sweden, died
at Upsal, on the 24th September, aged seventy. He had for nine
years occupied the chair of Sacred Philology at Lund, when in 1819
he succeeded his father in the see of Götheborg. In 1839, he was
promoted to the archbishopric of Upsal. In 1835, he assisted in the
establishment of the Swedish Missionary Society, on which occasion
he fraternized with the Methodists at Stockholm. He also addressed a
letter to the Evangelical Alliance, at its last meeting, regretting
his inability to attend. He has left to the University of Upsal
his library, consisting of upwards of 34,000 volumes, and his rich
collection of coins and medals, and of Scandinavian antiquities. This
is the fourth library bequeathed to the University of Upsal within
the space of a year, adding to its book-shelves no fewer than 115,000
volumes. The entire number of volumes possessed by the University is
now said to be 288,000, 11,000 of these being in manuscript.
* * * * *
The theatrical architect, dramatic writer, and novelist, SAMUEL
BEASELEY, died suddenly, on the 23d of October, at his residence,
Tonbridge Castle, Kent, in his sixty-sixth year, of apoplexy. He was
born in London, and early attached himself to art, letters, and the
stage. The private and public buildings which he was the architect of
are numerous. Among his productions as an author may be mentioned his
novels _The Roué_ and _The Oxonians_, and his farces of _Old Customs_,
_Bachelors' Wives_, _Jealous on all Sides_, and _Is he Jealous?_ Mr.
Beaseley's merits as an architect were generally acknowledged; and,
although he lived with great generosity, his talents and industry
enabled him to realize a considerable fortune.
* * * * *
MR. H. P. BORRELL, a numismatist of great practical experience and
profound judgment, enjoyed for the last quarter of a century, deserved
celebrity as a distinguished collector of medals and cultivator of the
knowledge of them. He was the author of many of the most important
contributions on unedited autonomous and imperial Greek coins which
have appeared during his time in the transactions of most of the
antiquarian societies in Europe, and especially in Great Britain. Many
of Mr. Borrell's important coins have passed, at different times,
into the collections of our British Museum, and of eminent private
individuals. Mr. Borrell's work on the coins of the Kings of Cyprus
affords an example of his laborious numismatical researches. Mr.
Borrell died at Smyrna, on the 2d of October.
* * * * *
REV. JAMES ENDELL TYLER, B. D., of London, was a native of Monmouth,
and became a distinguished student and a fellow of of Oriel College,
Oxford. On a particular occasion, he happened to attract the attention
of Lord Liverpool, then Premier, who, after inquiring, presented
him with the living of St. Giles-in-the-fields. This cure he filled
actively and ably. To the stall in St. Paul's he was, without his
asking, presented by the late Sir Robert Peel, "to mark," as the
Minister said, "his sense of Mr. Tyler's exertions in the cause of
education at Oxford, and of his exemplary discharge of his onerous
duties at St. Giles's." As an author, Mr. Tyler gained some celebrity.
His _Life of King Henry V._ attracted much attention.
* * * * *
EMMA MARTIN, a woman well known as a writer, and as an exemplar of
Socialism, died on the 8th of October, at Finchley Common, near London,
in the 39th year of her age. The London _Leader_, the organ of the
British Socialists, says, that, "allied to a husband (found in the
religious circle in which she was reared in Bristol) whose company it
was a humiliation to endure, she ultimately, even when she was the
mother of three children, refused to continue to submit to it. This,
though afterwards made a reproach to her, was so justifiable, that even
her religious friends found no fault with it. After much struggling
to support her children unaided, she was united to another husband
(Mr. Joshua Hopkins), her former one yet living. Though no marriage
ceremony was performed, or could be performed (such is the moral state
of our law, which denies divorce to all who are wronged, if they happen
to be also indigent), yet no affection was ever purer, no union ever
more honorable to both parties, and the whole range of priest-made
marriages never included one to which happiness belonged more surely,
and upon which respect could dwell more truly. Our first knowledge of
Mrs. Martin," continues the _Leader_, "was as an opponent of Socialism,
against which she delivered public lectures. But as soon as she saw
intellectual truth in it, she paused in her opposition to it. Long and
serious was the conflict the change in her convictions caused her; but
her native love of truth prevailed, and she came over to the advocacy
of that she had so resolutely and ably assailed. And none who ever
offered us alliance, rendered us greater service, or did it at greater
cost. Beautiful in expression, quick in wit, strong in will, eloquent
in speech, coherent in conviction, and of stainless character, she
was incomparable among public women. She was one of the few among the
early advocates of English Socialism who saw _that the conflict against
religion_ could not be confined to an attack on forms of faith--to a
mere comparison of creeds; and she attached only secondary importance
to the _abuses_ of Christianity, where she saw that _the whole_ was
an abuse of history, of reason, and of morality. Thus she was cut off
from all hope or sympathy from her former connections, and she met
with but limited friendships among her new allies. She saw further
than any around her what the new communism would end in. She saw that
it would establish the healthy despotism of the affections, in lieu of
the factitious tyrannies of custom and Parliament. The nature of her
opinions, which arose in conviction and not in antagonism, will best be
seen in two passages from her writings, at two remarkable periods of
her life. In 1835, she wrote in the _Bristol Literary Magazine_, which
she edited:--
"'Infidelity is the effusion of weak minds, and the resource
of guilty ones. Like the desolating Simoom of the desert, it
withers every thing within its reach; and as soon as it has
prostrated the morality of the individual, it invades the civil
rights of society.'
"In 1844, in the seventh of her _Weekly Addresses to the Inhabitants of
London_, of which it was the thirty-sixth thousand issued, she said:--
"'When Christianity arose, it gathered to its standard the
polished Greek, the restless Roman, the barbarous Saxon; but it
was suited only to the age in which it grew. It had anathemas
for the bitter-hearted to hurl at those they chose to designate
God's enemies. It had promises for the hopeful, cautions
for the prudent, charity for the good. It was all things to
all men. It became the grand leader of the ascetic to the
convent--of the chivalrous to the crusade--of the cruel to the
Star Chamber--of the scholar to the secret midnight cell, there
to feed on knowledge, but not to impart it. But at length its
contentional doctrines bade men look elsewhere for _peace_--for
some less equivocal morality, some clearer doctrines, some
surer truth.'
"In this belief she lived, worked, taught, and in this belief she
died. And in passing to the kingdom of the inscrutable future, whose
credentials could she better take than those she had won by her
courage and truthfulness? Could she take Pagan, Buddhist, Mahommedan,
Christian, or some morose sectarian shade; credentials soiled with
age, torn in strifes, stained with blood?... Will any who calumniate
the last hours of Freethinkers utter the pious fraud over this narrow
bed, and the memory of Emma Martin be distorted, as have been those
of Voltaire and our own Paine? Does the apparition of these outrages
glare upon this grave--outrages too ignoble to notice, too painful
to recognize? Heed them not--believe them not. Let not the Christian
insult her whom only the grave has vanquished. Let him not utter the
word of triumph over the dead, before whom living his coward tongue
would falter. Let his manliness teach him truth if his creed has failed
to teach him courtesy. As a worker for human improvement, Mrs. Martin
was as indefatigable as efficient. From the time when she published
her _Exiles of Piedmont_, to the issue of her essay on _God's Gifts
and Man's Duties_, and later still, she wrote with ardor, always
manifesting force of personal thought, and what is more unusual in the
writings of women--strength and brevity of expression. Her lectures
were always distinguished by the _instruction_ they conveyed, and the
earnestness with which they were delivered. In courage of advocacy and
thoroughness of view, no woman except Frances Wright is to be compared
with her; and only one, whose name is an affectionate household word
in our land (greater, indeed, in order of power), resembles Mrs.
Martin in largeness and sameness of speculation, and the capacity to
treat womanly and social questions. Mrs. Martin had a strength of will
which rules in all spheres, but ever chastened by womanly feeling. Her
affectionate nature as much astonished those who knew her in private,
as her resolution often astonished those who knew her in public.
Indeed, she was the most womanly woman of all the advocates of "Woman's
Rights." Her assertion of her claim to interfere in public affairs
was but a means of winning security from outrage for the domestic
affections. She would send the mother into the world--not in the
desertion of motherly duties, but to learn there what motherly duties
are--not to submit in ignorance to suckle slaves, but to learn how to
rear free men and intelligent and pure women."
We have copied thus much of the _Leader's_ obituary of Mrs. Martin,
because a certain unpremeditated boldness in it admits the reader to
instructive facts in the theory and practice of the party to which she
belonged.
* * * * *
YAR MOHAMMED, the celebrated Vizier of Herat, is reported to have died
on the 4th June last. He was one of the most intriguing princes in
Asia. Everybody must remember him during the few years which preceded
the occupation of Affghanistan by the English. He always managed to
keep on the friendliest terms with them and more than one mission was
sent to his court from India.
* * * * *
The well-known composer of ballads, &c., ALEXANDER LEE, died near
London, suddenly on the 8th of October. He was a son of the once
notorious boxer, Henry Lee, and was married to the late popular singer,
Mrs. Waylett. He at one period was lessee of Drury Lane Theatre, in
partnership with Captain Polhill. He had been Musical Director of the
Olympic and Strand Theatres, of Vauxhall Gardens, &c. He wrote the
music for the _Invincibles_, which had such a run, with Madame Vestris
in the chief part, at Covent Garden, and afterwards at the American
Theatres. To name his ballads would occupy a large space, for a more
prolific song-writer never existed. We may mention, however, amongst
his works, _The Soldier's Tear_; _Away, away to the mountain's brow_;
_Come where the aspens quiver_; _I'll be no submissive wife_; _Rise,
gentle moon_; _Kate Kearney_; _Come dwell with me_; _Pretty star of
night_; _I've plucked the fairest flower_; _Bird of love_; _Meet me in
the willow glen_; _I'm o'er young to marry yet_; _Wha wad na fight for
Charlie_; _When the dew is on the grass_; _Down where the blue bells_,
&c. Many of these compositions will perpetuate the name of Alexander
Lee as a composer of the English school of simple and unaffected
melody. We are inclined to believe, more of his songs than those of any
other composer are known in the United States.
* * * * *
PRINCE FREDERICK WILLIAM CHARLES, OF PRUSSIA, died at Berlin on the
28th September. He was a brother of the late Frederick William the
Third, uncle of the present King, and the youngest legitimate son of
Frederick William the Second. He was born at Potsdam on the 3d of July,
1783. He served actively in the army during the war with France, which
terminated so disastrously at the battle of Jena. He was also present
at the battles of Katzbach and Leipsic, and subsequently at Waterloo
commanded the reserve cavalry of the fourth corps of the Prussians.
Gentlemen's and Ladies' Fashions for December.
In the fashionable world of this country we have at length the
long-expected "hat of the future," from the ingenious artist GENIN,
who appears to be the only American who brings to the manufacture of
hats an inventive faculty. It is likely that these hats will gradually
take the place of the funnel and stove-pipe styles which have been so
long in vogue. They are made of fine material, are light, pliable,
durable, and have the more important merit of elegant and picturesque
appearance. They are indifferently styled the _Union Hat_, and the
_Grandison Hat_--the last name referring to the ideal of Queen Anne's
days.
[Illustration]
It is much doubted whether any of the changes made in gentlemen's
costume in the last half century are improvements, and there are very
few persons of taste who will approve the hat of the last few years
more than that worn in the good old times of General Washington, when
the three-cornered chapeau began to give place to such hats its are
represented in our illustration.
[Illustration]
The next is somewhat more in vogue, at least for younger men, and
for the opera and the theatre. It sets off a fine-looking face
advantageously.
[Illustration]
The last is better suited for travelling or hunting.
In Ladies' Fashions, there are some novelties, though comparatively
few of a kind to attract a large degree of attention. We select for
illustration in the first place--
[Illustration]
_Close Under-sleeve._--This sleeve will be found to be of a very
desirable form by ladies who object to the open sleeves, as it combines
the elegant effect of the latter with the comfort of the close sleeve.
It may be made either in muslin or net, and is cut as a bishop's
sleeve, the fulness being confined on a band at the wrist. Two broad
frills of lace or needlework are attached to the lower part of the
sleeve. These frills are open in front of the arm.
[Illustration]
_Under-sleeve of Lace._--This sleeve is intended to be worn for evening
dress. The double row of vandyked lace forming the trimming should drop
below the sleeve of the dress, under which the lace sleeve is to be
worn.
Among the most striking and beautiful articles in the way of Mantillas,
is the _Talma_, represented in the following engraving. The capuche
is formed on the model of those worn by the celebrated monks of St.
Francis, and the _tout ensemble_ is very graceful and beautiful. The
entire design is very well exhibited in the illustration. The Talmas
are made of velvet, silk, satin, and fine cloth. They have been
introduced in New-York by Mr. Bulpin, of Broadway.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The jacket and waistcoat described in our last have a certain currency,
but are not likely to be universally adopted. The above costumes, from
the latest _modes_ received from Paris, are in the main conservative,
and the engraving is so distinctive that the figures scarcely need
description.
Black now becomes indispensable in the toilettes of ladies of fashion;
formerly it was exclusively reserved for days of mourning, A black
dress does not interfere with the robes of varied colors, and the
materials are rich and in good taste. Jet, in fringes or lace, is worn
with all materials. Upon moire or satin, deep flounces of chantilly or
_ruches_ of lace, placed _en tablier_, are much worn; taffetas flounces
are cut and stamped in patterns, or covered with narrow velvets
imitating embroidery. For mantelets, and every species of outside
garments, black will more generally perhaps than ever before prevail;
and rich furs will have their old prominence for trimming, particularly
for garments of velvet. Fine and heavy plushes are also being rather
largely manufactured for such purposes.
There is scarcely any change perceptible in the shape of bonnets, most
of the new ones being of the form which has been generally worn for
some time; yet there is a slight modification of that shape in bonnets
made expressly for the winter. The front is somewhat less wide and
open, and the bavolet, being rather narrower, droops less at the back
of the head. Of the various materials likely to be employed for bonnets
during the coming winter, none will be more fashionable than velvet.
Among the velvet bonnets we notice one of violet-colored velvet trimmed
with bows of the same, intermingled with black lace and jet beads. The
inside trimming consists of velvet pansies, of the natural color of
the flowers, having yellow centres. With the flowers are combined a
few loops of velvet ribbon of a rich yellow tint, matching the centre
of the flowers. Another bonnet, composed of dark blue therry velvet,
is trimmed with ribbon, striped with blue and orange. This bonnet is
ornamented in the inside with white flowers.
A Russian winter riding habit is described as very simple but costly,
having a bonnet or hat of sables or other furs, setting on the head
very much like a chancellor's full wig, and secured by a richly gemmed
bracelet under the chin. The close coat, and light and flowing mantle
nearly concealing it, are of black or other dark-colored velvet. This
will be in vogue probably only in the intensest severity of the cold
season. Black cloth, embroidered, is used for the same purpose.
Transcriber's Notes:
Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors
were corrected.
Italics markup is enclosed in _underscores_.
Greek text has been transliterated and enclosed in #number signs#.
On p. 683 the author's name is given as Pisistratus Caxton.
However, the contents list the author as Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton. The table of contents was correct so changed the
reference on p. 683.
P. 636 corrected typo in Greek text.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The International Magazine, Vol. IV. New-York, December 1, 1851. No. V. - Of Literature, Art, and Science. Vol. IV. New-York, December - 1, 1851. No. V" ***
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