Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Vol. 53, No. 329.

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARLÍNSKI. BY THOMAS B. SHAW, B.A. OF CAMBRIDGE, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL LYCEUM OF TSARSKOË SELO.

THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The English mania for travelling, which supplies our continental neighbours with such abundant matter for wonderment and witticism, is of no very recent date. Now more than ever, perhaps, does this passion seem to possess us:

"——tenet insanabile multos

Terrarum κακοηθες, et ægro in corde senescit:"

when the press groans with "Tours," "Trips," "Hand-books," "Journeys," "Visits."

In spite of this, it is as notorious as unaccountable, that England knows very little, or at least very little correctly, of the social condition, manners, and literature of one of the most powerful among her continental sisters.

The friendly relations between Great Britain and Russia, established in the reign of Edward V., have subsisted without interruption since that epoch, so auspicious to both nations: the bond of amity, first knit by Chancellor in 1554, has never since been relaxed: the two nations have advanced, each at its own pace, and by its own paths, towards the sublime goal of improvement and civilization—have stood shoulder to shoulder in the battle for the weal and liberty of mankind.

It is, nevertheless, as strange as true, that the land of Alfred and Elizabeth is yet but imperfectly acquainted with the country of Peter and of Catharine. The cause of this ignorance is assuredly not to be found in any indifference or want of curiosity on the part of English travellers. There is no lack of pilgrims annually leaving the bank of Thames,

"With cockle hat and staff,

With gourd and sandal shoon;"

armed duly with note-book and "patent Mordan," directing their wandering steps to the shores of Ingria, or the gilded cupolas of Moscow. But a very short residence in the empire of the Tsar will suffice to convince a foreigner how defective, and often how false, is the information given by travellers respecting the social and national character of the Russians. These abundant and singular misrepresentations are not, of course, voluntary; and it may not be useless to point out their principal sources.

The chief of these is, without doubt, the difficulty and novelty of the language, and the unfortunate facility of travelling over the beaten track—from St Petersburg to Moscow, and from Moscow, perhaps, to Nijny Nóvgorod, without any acquaintance with that language. The foreigner may enjoy, during a visit of the usual duration, the hospitality for which the higher classes are so justly celebrated; but his association with the nobility will be found an absolute obstacle to the making even a trifling progress in the Russian language; which, though now regaining a degree of attention from the elevated classes,¹ too long denied to it by those with whom their native tongue was an unfashionable one—he would have no occasion at all to speak, and not even very frequent opportunities of hearing.

But even in those rare cases where the stranger united to a determination to study the noble and interesting language of the country, an intention of remaining here long enough to learn it, he was often discouraged by the belief, that the literature was too poor to repay his time and labour. Besides, the Russian language has so little relation to the other European tongues—it stands so much alone, and throws so little direct light upon any of them, that another obstacle was thrown into his way.

The acquisition of any one of that great family of languages, all derived, more or less remotely, from the Latin, which extends over the whole south and west of Europe, cannot fail to cast a strong light upon the other cognate dialects; as the knowledge of any one of the Oriental tongues facilitates, nay almost confers, a mastery over the thousand others, which are less languages of distinct type than dialects of the same speech, offshoots from the same stock.

Add to this, the extraordinary errors and omissions which abound in every disquisition hitherto published in French, English, and German periodicals with regard to Russian literature, and deform those wretched rags of translation which are all that has been hitherto done towards the reproduction, in our own language, of the literature of Russia. These versions were made by persons utterly unacquainted with the country, the manners, and the people, or made after the Russian had been distilled through the alembic of a previous French or German translation.

Poetry naturally forces its way into the notice of a foreign nation sooner than prose; but it is, nevertheless, rather singular than honourable to the literary enterprise of England, that the present is the first attempt to introduce to the British public any work of Russian Prose Fiction whatever, with any thing like a reasonable selection of subject and character, at least directly from the original language.

The two volumes of Translations published by Bowring, under the title of "Russian Anthology," and consisting chiefly of short lyric pieces, would appear at first sight an exception to that indifference to the productions of Russian genius of which we have accused the English public; and the popularity of that collection would be an additional encouragement to the hope, that our charge may be, if not ill-founded, at least exaggerated.

We are willing to believe, that the degree—if we are rightly informed, no slight one—of interest with which these volumes were welcomed in England, was sufficient to blind their readers to the extreme incompetency with which the translations they contained were executed.

It is always painful to find fault—more painful to criticise with severity—the work of a person whose motive was the same as that which actuates the present publication; but when the gross unfaithfulness ² exhibited in the versions in question tends to give a false and disparaging idea of the value and the tone of Russian poetry, we may be excused for our apparent uncourteousness in thus pointing out their defects.

It will not, we trust, be considered out of place to give our readers a brief sketch of the history of the Russian literature; the origin, growth, and fortunes of which are marked by much that is peculiar. In doing this we shall content ourselves with noting, as briefly as possible, the events which preceded and accompanied the birth of letters in Russia, and the evolution of a literature not elaborated by the slow and imperceptible action of time, but bursting, like the armed Pallas, suddenly into light.

In performing this task, we shall confine our attention solely to the department of Prose Fiction, looking forward meanwhile with anxiety, though not without hope, to a future opportunity of discussing more fully the intellectual annals of Russia.

In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril ³ and Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostisláff, Sviatopólk, and Kótsel, then chiefs of the Moravians.

The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek alphabet, to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain sounds which do not occur in the Greek language,⁴ to add a number of other signs borrowed from the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic. So closely, indeed, did this alphabet, called the Cyrillian, follow the Greek characters, that the use of the aspirates was retained without any necessity.

These characters (with the exception of a few which are omitted in the Russian) varied surprisingly little in their form,⁵ and perhaps without any change whatever in their vocal value, compose the modern alphabet of the Russian language; an examination of which would go far, in our opinion, to settle the long agitated question respecting the ancient pronunciation of the classic languages, particularly as Cyril and his brother adapted the Greek alphabet to a language totally foreign from, and unconnected with, any dialect of Greek.

In this, as in all other languages, the translation of the Bible is the first monument and model of literature. This version was made by Cyril immediately after the composition of the alphabet. The language spoken at Thessalonika was the Servian: but from the immense number of purely Greek words which occur in the translation, as well as from the fact of the version being a strictly literal one, it is probable that the Scriptures were not translated into any specific spoken dialect at all; but that a kind of mezzo-termine was selected—or rather formed—for the purpose. What we have advanced derives a still stronger degree of probability from the circumstance, that the Slavonic Bible follows the Greek construction. This Bible, with slight changes and corrections produced by three or four revisions made at different periods, is that still employed by the Russian Church; and the present spoken language of the country differs so widely from it, that the Slavonian of the Bible forms a separate branch of education to the priests and to the upper classes—who are instructed in this dead language, precisely as an Italian must study Latin in order to read the Bible.

Above the sterile and uninteresting desert of early Russian history, towers, like the gigantic Sphynx of Ghizeh over the sand of the Thebaid, one colossal figure—that of Vladímir Sviatoslávitch; the first to surmount the bloody splendour of the Great Prince's bonnet ⁶ with the mildly-radiant Cross of Christ.

From the conversion to Christianity of Vladímir and his subjects—passing over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar hordes, which lasted for about 250 years—we may consider two languages, essentially distinct, to have been employed in Russia till the end of the 17th century—the one the written or learned, the other the spoken language.

The former was the Slavonian into which the Holy Scriptures were translated: and this remained the learned or official language for a long period. In this—or in an imitation of this, effected with various degrees of success—were compiled the different collections of Monkish annals which form the treasury whence future historians were to select their materials from among the valuable, but confused accumulations of facts; in this the solemn acts of Government, treaties, codes, &c., were composed; and the few writings which cannot be comprised under the above classes ⁷ were naturally compiled in the language, emphatically that of the Church and of learning.

The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which overran, like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a half the fertile plains of central and southern Russia, contented themselves with exacting tribute from a nation which they despised probably too much to feel any desire of interfering with its language; and the dominion of the Tartars produced hardly any perceptible effect upon the Russian tongue.⁸

It is to the reign of Alexéi Mikháilovitch, who united Little Russia to Muscovy, that we must look for the germ of the modern literature of the country: the language had begun to feel the influence of the Little Russian, tinctured by the effects of Polish civilization, and the spirit of classicism which so long distinguished the Sarmatian literature.

The impulse given to this union, of so momentous an import to the future fortunes of the empire, at the beginning of the year 1654, would possibly have brought forth in course of time a literature in Russia such as we now find it, had not the extraordinary reign, and still more extraordinary character, of Peter the Great interposed certain disturbing—if, indeed, they may not be called in some measure impeding—forces. That giant hand which broke down the long impregnable dike which had hitherto separated Russia from the rest of Europe, and admitted the arts, the learning, and the civilization of the West to rush in with so impetuous a flood, fertilizing as it came, but also destroying and sweeping away something that was valuable, much that was national—that hand was unavoidably too heavy and too strong to nurse the infant seedling of literature; and the command and example of Peter perhaps rather favoured the imitation of what was good in other languages, than the production of originality in his own.

This opinion, bold and perhaps rash as it may appear to Russians, seems to derive some support, as well as illustration, from the immense number of foreign words which make the Russian of Peter's time

the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with an infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every tongue; terms which might have been—have, indeed, since been—translated into words of Russian form and origin. A review of the literary progress made at this time will, we think, go far to establish our proposition; it will exhibit a very large proportion of translations, but very few original productions.

From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note: we shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or vernacular Russian literature; confining our attention, as we have proposed, to the Prose Fiction, and contenting ourselves with noting, cursorily, the principal authors in this kind, living and dead.

At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it will be convenient to keep in mind) three languages—the Slavonic, to which we have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little Russia.

The fact, that the learned are not yet agreed upon the exact epoch from which to date the origin of the modern Russian literature, will probably raise a smile on the reader's lip; but the difficulty of establishing this important starting-point will become apparent when he reflects upon the circumstance, that the literature is—as we have stated—divisible into two distinct and widely differing regions. It will be sufficiently accurate to date the origin of the modern Russian literature at about a century back from the present time; and to consider Lomonósoff as its founder. Mikháil Vassílievitch Lomonósoff, born in 1711, is the author who may with justice be regarded as the Chaucer or the Boccacio of the North: a man of immense and varied accomplishments, distinguished in almost every department of literature, and in many of the walks of science. An orator and a poet, he adorned the language whose principles he had fixed as a grammarian.

He was the first to write in the spoken language of his country, and, in conjunction with his two contemporaries, Soumarókoff and Kheráskoff, he laid the foundations of the Russian literature.

Of the other two names we have mentioned as entitled to share the reverence due from every Russian to the fathers of his country's letters, it will be sufficient to remark, that Soumarókoff was the first to introduce tragedy and opera, and Kheráskoff, the author of two epic poems which we omit to particularize, as not coming within our present scope, wrote a work entitled "Cadmus and Harmonia," which may be considered as the first romance. It is a narrative and metaphysical work, which we should class as a "prose poem;" the style being considerably elevated above the tone of the "Musa pedestris."

The name of Emín comes next in historical, though not literary, importance: though the greater part of his productions consists of translations, particularly of those shorter pieces of prose fiction called by the Italians "novelle," he was the author of a few original pieces, now but little read; his style bears the marks, like that of Kheráskoff, of heaviness, stiffness, and want of finish.

The reputation of Karamzín is too widely spread throughout Europe to render necessary more than a passing remark as to the additions made by him to the literature of his country in the department of fiction: he commenced a romance, of which he only lived to finish a few of the first chapters.

Naréjniy was the first to paint the real life of Russia—or rather of the South or Little Russia: in his works there is a good deal of vivacity, but as they are deformed by defects both in style and taste, his reputation has become almost extinct. We cannot quit this division of our subject, which refers to romantic fiction anterior to the appearance of the regular historical novel, without mentioning the names of two, among a considerable number of authors, distinguished as having produced short narratives or tales, embodying some historical event—Polevói and Bestónjeff—the latter of whom wrote, under the name of Marlínski, a very large number of tales, which have acquired a high and deserved reputation.

It is with Zagóskin that we may regard the regular historical novel—viewing that species of composition as exemplified in the works of Scott—as having commenced.

With reference to the present state of romance in Russia, the field is so extensive as to render impossible, in this place, more than a cursory allusion to the principal authors and their best-known works: in doing which, we shall attend more exclusively to those productions of which the subject or treatment is purely national.

One of the most popular and prolific writers of fiction is Zagóskin, whose historical romance "Yoúriy Milosláffskiy," met with great and permanent success. The epoch of this story is in 1612, a most interesting crisis in the Russian history, when the valour of Mínin enabled his countrymen to shake off the hated yoke of Poland. His other work, "Roslavleóff," is less interesting: the period is 1812. We may also mention his "Iskonsítel"—"the Tempter"—a fantastic story, in which an imaginary being is represented as mingling with and influencing the affairs of real life.

Of Boulgárin, we may mention, besides his "Ivan Vuíjgin," a romance in the manner of "Gil Blas," the scenery and characters of which are entirely Russian, two historical novels of considerable importance. "The False Dimítri," and "Mazeppa,"—the hero of the latter being a real person, and not, as most readers are aware, a fictitious character invented by Byron.

Next comes the name of Lajétchnikoff, whose "Last Page" possesses a reputation, we believe, tolerably extensive throughout Europe. The action passes during the war between Charles XII. and Peter the Great, and Catharine plays a chief part in it, as servant of the pastor Glück, becoming empress at the conclusion. The "House of Ice," by the same writer, is perhaps more generally known than the preceding work. The last-named romance depicts with great spirit the struggle between the Russian and foreign parties in the reign of Anna Ivánovna. But perhaps the most remarkable work of Lajétchnikoff is the romance entitled "Bassourmán," the scene of which is laid under Iván III., surnamed the Great.⁹ Another Polevói (Nikolái) produced a work of great merit:—"The Oath at the Tomb of Our Lord," a very faithful picture of the first half of the fifteenth century, and singular from the circumstance that love plays no part in the drama. Besides this, we owe to Polevói a wild story entitled "Abbaddon." Veltman produced, under the title of "Kostshéi the Deathless," a historical study of the manners of the twelfth century, possessing considerable merit. It would be unjust to omit the name of a lady, the Countess Shíshkin, who produced the historical novel "Mikháil Vassílievitch Skópin-Shúisky," which obtained great popularity.

The picturesque career of Lomonósoff gave materials for a romantic biography of that poet, the work of Xenophónt Polevói, resembling, in its mixture of truth and fiction, the "Wahrheit und Dichtung" of Goethe.

Among the considerable number of romances already mentioned, those exhibiting scenes of private life and domestic interest have not been neglected. Kaláshnikoff wrote "The Merchant Jáloboff's Daughter," and the "Kamtchadálka," both describing the scenery and manners of Siberia; the former painting various parts of that wild and interesting country, the latter confined more particularly to the Peninsula of Kamtchátka. Besides Gógol, whose easy and prolific pen has presented us with so many humorous sketches of provincial life, we cannot pass over Begitchéff, whose "Khólmsky Family" possesses much interest; but the delineations of Gógol depend so much for their effect upon delicate shades of manner, &c., that it is not probable they can ever be effectively reproduced in another language.

Mentioning Peróffsky, whose "Monastírka" gives a picture of Russian interior life, we pass to Gretch, an author of some European reputation. His "Trip to Germany" describes, with singular piquancy, the manners of a very curious race—the Germans of St Petersburg; and "Tchérnaia Jénstchina," "the Black Woman," presents a picture of Russian society, which was welcomed with great eagerness by the public.

The object of these pages being to invite the attention of British readers to a very rich field, in a literature hitherto most unaccountably neglected by the English public, the present would not be a fit occasion to enter with any minuteness into the history of Russian letters, or to give, in fact, more than a passing allusion to its chief features; the translator hopes that he will be excused for the meagreness of the present notice.

He will be abundantly repaid for his exertions, by the discovery of any increasing desire on the part of his countrymen to become more accurately acquainted with the character of a nation, worthy, he is convinced, of a very high degree of respect and admiration. How could that acquaintance be so delightfully, or so effectually made, as by the interchange of literature? The great works of English genius are read, studied, and admired, throughout the vast empire of Russia; the language of England is rapidly and steadily extending, and justice, no less than policy, demands, that many absurd misapprehensions respecting the social and domestic character, no less than the history, of Russia, should be dispelled by truth.

The translator, in conclusion, trusts that it will not be superfluous to specify one or two of the reasons which induced him to select the present romance, as the first-fruit of his attempt to naturalize in England the literature of Russia.

It is considered as a very good specimen of the author's style; the facts and characters are all strictly true;¹⁰ besides this, the author passed many years in the Caucasus, and made full use of the opportunities he thus enjoyed of becoming familiar with the language, manners, and scenery of a region on which the attention of the English public has long been turned with peculiar interest.

The picturesqueness as well as the fidelity of his description will, it is hoped, secure for the tale a favourable reception with a public always "novitatis avida," and whose appetite, now somewhat palled with the "Bismillahs" and "Mashallahs" of the ordinary oriental novels, may find some piquancy in a new variety of Mahomedan life—that of the Caucasian Tartars.

The Russian language possessing many characters and some few sounds for which there is no exact equivalent in English, we beg to say a word upon the method adopted on the present occasion so to represent the Russian orthography, as to avoid the shocking barbarisms of such combinations as zh, &c. &c., and to secure, at the same time, an approach to the correct pronunciation. Throughout these pages the vowels a, e, i, o, y, are supposed to be pronounced as in French, the diphthong ou as in the word you, the j always with the French sound.

With respect to the combinations of consonants employed, kh has the gutteral sound of the ch in the Scottish word loch, and gh is like a rather rough or coarse aspirate.

To avoid the possibility of errors, the combination tch, though not a very soft one to the eye, represents a Russian sound for which there is no character in English. It is, of course, uttered as in the word watch.

As a great deal of the apparent discord of Russian words, as pronounced by foreigners, arises from ignorance of the place of the accent, we have added a sign over every polysyllable word, indicating the part on which the stress is to be laid.

The few preceding rules will, the translator hopes, enable his countrymen to attack the pronunciation of the Russian names without the ancient dread inspired by terrific and complicated clusters of consonants; and will perhaps prove to them that the language is both an easy and a melodious one.

CHAPTER I.

It was Djoumá.¹¹ Not far from Bouináki, a considerable village of Northern Daghestán, the young Tartars were assembled for their national exercise called "djigítering;" that is, the horse-race accompanied by various trials of boldness and strength. Bouináki is situated upon two ledges of the precipitous rocks of the mountain: on the left of the road leading from Derbend to Tarki, rises, soaring above the town, the crest of Caucasus, feathered with wood; on the right, the shore, sinking imperceptibly, spreads itself out into meadows, on which the Caspian Sea pours its eternal murmur, like the voice of human multitudes.

A vernal day was fading into evening, and all the inhabitants, attracted rather by the coolness of the breeze than by any feeling of curiosity, had quitted their sáklas,¹² and assembled in crowds on both sides of the road. The women, without veils, and with coloured kerchiefs rolled like turbans round their heads, clad in the long chemise,¹³ confined by the short arkhaloúkh, and wide toumáns,¹⁴ sat in rows, while strings of children sported before them. The men, assembled in little groups, stood, or rested on their knees;¹⁵ others, in twos or threes, walked slowly round, smoking tobacco in little wooden pipes: a cheerful buzz arose, and ever and anon resounded the clattering of hoofs, and the cry "katch, katch!" (make way!) from the horsemen preparing for the race.

Nature, in Daghestán, is most lovely in the month of May. Millions of roses poured their blushes over the crags; their odour was streaming in the air; the nightingale was not silent in the green twilight of the wood, almond-trees, all silvered with their flowers, arose like the cupolas of a pagoda, and resembled, with their lofty branches twined with leaves, the minarets of some Mussulman mosque. Broad-breasted oaks, like sturdy old warriors, rose here and there, while poplars and chenart-trees, assembled in groups and surrounded by underwood, looked like children ready to wander away to the mountains, to escape the summer heats. Sportive flocks of sheep—their fleeces speckled with rose-colour; buffaloes wallowing in the mud of the fountains, or for hours together lazily butting each other with their horns; here and there on the mountains noble steeds, which moved (their manes floating on the breeze) with a haughty trot along the hills—such is the frame that encloses the picture of every Mussulman village. On this Djoumá, the neighbourhood of Bouináki was more than usually animated. The sun poured his floods of gold on the dark walls of the flat-roofed sáklas, clothing them with fantastic shadows, and adding beauty to their forms. In the distance, crawling along the mountain, the creaking arbas ¹⁶ flitted among the grave-stones of a little burial-ground ... past them, before them, flew a horseman, raising the dust along the road ... the mountain crest and the boundless sea gave grandeur to this picture, and all nature breathed a glow of life.

"He comes, he comes!" was murmured through the crowd; all was in motion. The horsemen, who till now had been chattering with their acquaintance on foot, or disorderedly riding about the meadow, now leaped upon their steeds, and dashed forward to meet the cavalcade which was descending to the plain: it was Ammalát Bek, the nephew of the Shamkhál ¹⁷ of Tarki, with his suite. He was habited in a black Persian cloak, edged with gold-lace, the hanging sleeves thrown back over his shoulders. A Turkish shawl was wound round his arkhaloúkh, which was made of flowered silk. Red shalwárs were lost in his yellow high-heeled riding-boots. His gun, dagger, and pistol, glittered with gold and silver arabesque work. The hilt of his sabre was enriched with gems. The Prince of Tarki was a tall, well-made youth, of frank countenance; black curls streamed behind his ears from under his cap—a slight mustache shaded his upper lip—his eyes glittered with a proud courtesy. He rode a bright bay steed, which fretted under his hand like a whirlwind. Contrary to custom, the horse's caparison was not the round Persian housing, embroidered all over with silk, but the light Circassian saddle, ornamented with silver on a black ground; and the stirrups were of the black steel of Kharamán, inlaid with gold. Twenty noúkers ¹⁸ on spirited horses, and dressed in cloaks glittering with lace, their caps cocked jauntily, and leaning affectedly on one side, pranced and sidled after him. The people respectfully stood up before their Bek, and bowed, pressing their right hand upon their right knee. A murmur of whispered approbation followed the young chief as he passed among the women. Arrived at the southern extremity of the ground, Ammalát stopped. The chief people, the old men leaning upon their sticks, and the elders of Bouináki, stood round in a circle to catch a kind word from the Bek; but Ammalát did not pay them any particular attention, and with cold politeness replied in monosyllables to the flatteries and obeisances of his inferiors. He waved his hand; this was the signal to commence the race.

Twenty of the most fiery horsemen dashed forward, without the slightest order or regularity, galloping onward and back again, placing themselves in all kinds of attitudes, and alternately passing each other. At one moment they jostled one another from the course, and at the same time held in their horses, then again they let them go at full gallop over the plain. After this, they each took slender sticks, called djigidís, and darted them as they rode, either in the charge or the pursuit, and again seizing them as they flew, or picking them up from the earth. Several tumbled from their saddles under the strong blows; and then resounded the loud laugh of the spectators, while loud applauses greeted the conqueror; sometimes the horses stumbled, and the riders were thrown over their heads, hurled off by a double force from the shortness of their stirrups. Then commenced the shooting. Ammalát Bek had remained a little apart, looking on with apparent pleasure. His noúkers, one after the other, had joined the crowd of djigíterers, so that, at last, only two were left by his side. For some time he was immovable, and followed with an indifferent gaze the imitation of an Asiatic combat; but by degrees his interest grew stronger. At first he watched the cavaliers with great attention, then he began to encourage them by his voice and gestures, he rose higher in his stirrups, and at last the warrior-blood boiled in his veins, when his favourite noúker could not hit a cap which he had thrown down before him. He snatched his gun from his attendants, and dashed forward like an arrow, winding among the sporters. "Make way—make way!" was heard around, and all, dispersing like a rain-cloud on either side, gave place to Ammalát Bek.

At the distance of a verst ¹⁹ stood ten poles with caps hanging on them. Ammalát rode straight up to them, waved his gun round his head, and turned close round the pole; as he turned he stood up in his stirrups, turned back—bang!—the cap tumbled to the ground; without checking his speed he reloaded, the reins hanging on his horse's neck—knocked off another, then a third—and so on the whole ten. A murmur of applause arose on all sides; but Ammalát, without stopping, threw his gun into the hands of one of his noúkers, pulled out a pistol from his belt, and with the ball struck the shoe from the hind foot of his horse; the shoe flew off, and fell far behind him; he then again took his gun from his noúker, and ordered him to gallop on before him. Quicker than thought both darted forward. When half-way round the course, the noúker drew from his pocket a rouble, and threw it up in the air. Ammalát raised himself in the saddle, without waiting till it fell; but at the very instant his horse stumbled with all his four legs together, and striking the dust with his nostrils, rolled prostrate. All uttered a cry of terror; but the dexterous horseman, standing up in the stirrups, without losing his seat, or even leaning forward, as if he had been aware that he was going to fall, fired rapidly, and hitting the rouble with his ball, hurled it far among the people. The crowd shouted with delight—"Igeed, igeed! (bravo!) Alla valla-ha!" But Ammalát Bek, modestly retiring, dismounted from his steed, and throwing the reins to his djilladár, (groom,) ordered him immediately to have the horse shod. The race and the shooting was continued.

At this moment there rode up to Ammalát his emdjék,²⁰ Saphir-Ali, the son of one of the poor beks of Bouináki, a young man of an agreeable exterior, and simple, cheerful character. He had grown up with Ammalát, and therefore treated him with great familiarity. He leaped from his horse, and nodding his head, exclaimed—"Noúker Mémet Rasoúl has knocked up the old cropped ²¹ stallion, in trying to leap him over a ditch seven paces wide." "And did he leap it?" cried Ammalát impatiently. "Bring him instantly to me!" He went to meet the horse—and without putting his foot in the stirrup, leaped into the saddle, and galloped to the bed of a mountain-torrent. As he galloped, he pressed the horse with his knee, but the wearied animal, not trusting to his strength, bolted aside on the very brink, and Ammalát was obliged to make another turn. The second time, the steed, stimulated by the whip, reared up on his hind-legs in order to leap the ditch, but he hesitated, grew restive, and resisted with his fore-feet. Ammalát grew angry. In vain did Saphir-Ali entreat him not to force the horse, which had lost in many a combat and journey the elasticity of his limbs. Ammalát would not listen to any thing; but urging him with a cry, and striking him with his drawn sabre for the third time, he galloped him at the ravine; and when, for the third time, the old horse stopped short in his stride, not daring to leap, he struck him so violently on the head with the hilt of his sabre, that he fell lifeless on the earth.

"This is the reward of faithful service!" said Saphir-Ali, compassionately, as he gazed on the lifeless steed.

Seeing the anger of the Bek, all were silent. The horsemen, however, continued their djigítering.

And suddenly was heard the thunder of Russian drums, and the bayonets of Russian soldiers glittered as they wound over the hill. It was a company of the Kourínsky regiment of infantry, sent from a detachment which had been dispatched to Akoúsh, then in a state of revolt, under Sheikh Ali Khan, the banished chief of Derbend. This company had been protecting a convoy of supplies from Derbend, whither it was returning by the mountain road. The commander of the company, Captain ——, and one officer with him, rode in front. Before they had reached the race-course, the retreat was beaten, and the company halted, throwing aside their havresacks and piling their muskets, but without lighting a fire.

The arrival of a Russian detachment could have been no novelty to the inhabitants of Daghestán in the year 1819; and even yet, it must be confessed, it is an event that gives them no pleasure. Superstition made them look on the Russians as eternal enemies—enemies, however, vigorous and able; and they determined, therefore, not to injure them but in secret, by concealing their hatred under a mask of amity. A buzz spread among the people on the appearance of the Russians: the women returned by winding paths to the village, not forgetting, however, to gaze secretly at the strangers. The men, on the contrary, threw fierce glances at them over their shoulders, and began to assemble in groups, discussing how they might best get rid of them, and relieve themselves from the podvód ²², and so on. A multitude of loungers and boys, however, surrounded the Russians as they reposed upon the grass. Some of the Kekkhoúds (starosts ²³) and Tehaoúshes (desiátniks ²⁴) appointed by the Russian Government, hastily advancing to the Captain, pulled off their caps, after the usual salutation, "Khot ghialdi!" (welcome!) and "Yakshimoúsen, tazamoúsen, sen-ne-ma-moúsen," (I greet you,) arrived at the inevitable question at a meeting of Asiatics, "What news?"—"Na khaber?"

"The only news with me is, that my horse has cast a shoe, and the poor devil is dead lame," answered the Captain in pretty good Tartar: "and here is, just ápropos, a blacksmith!" he continued, turning to a broad-shouldered Tartar, who was filing the fresh-shod hoof of Ammalát's horse. "Kounák! (my friend,)—shoe my horse—the shoes are ready—'tis but the clink of a hammer, and 'tis done in a moment!"

The blacksmith turned sulkily towards the Captain a face tanned by his forge and by the sun, looked from the corners of his eyes at his questioner, stroked the thick mustache which overshadowed a beard long unrazored, and which might for its bristles have done honour to any boar; flattened his arákshin (bonnet) on his head, and coolly continued putting away his tools in their bag.

"And I should advise you to shoe him," replied the Captain, observing on the part of the Tartar a desire to jest.

"I will pay you what you like for your work; but I tell you that, whether you like it or not, you must do what I want."

"The will of Allah is above ours; and he does not permit us to work on Djoumá. We sin enough for gain on common days, so on a holiday I do not wish to buy coals with silver."²⁵

"But were you not at work just now, obstinate blockhead? Is not one horse the same as another? Besides, mine is a real Mussulman—look at the mark ²⁶—the blood of Karabákh."

"All horses are alike; but not so those who ride them: Ammalát Bek is my aga (lord.)"

"That is, if you had taken it into your head to refuse him, he would have had your ears cropped; but you will not work for me, in the hope that I would not dare to do the same. Very well, my friend! I certainly will not crop your ears, but be assured that I will warm that orthodox back of yours with two hundred pretty stinging nogaikas (lashes with a whip) if you won't leave off your nonsense—do you hear?"

"I hear—and I answer as I did before: I will not shoe the horse—for I am a good Mussulman."

"And I will make you shoe him, because I am a good soldier. As you have worked at the will of your Bek, you shall work for the need of a Russian officer—without this I cannot proceed. Corporals, forward!"

In the mean time a circle of gazers had been extending round the obstinate blacksmith, like a ring made in the water by casting a stone into it. Some in the crowd were disputing the best places, hardly knowing what they were running to see; and at last more cries were heard: "It is not fair—it cannot be: to-day is a holiday: to-day it is a sin to work!" Some of the boldest, trusting to their numbers, pulled their caps over their eyes, and felt at the hilts of their daggers, pressing close up to the Captain, and crying "Don't shoe him, Alékper! Do nothing for him: here's news, my masters! What new prophets for us are these unwashed Russians?" The Captain was a brave man, and thoroughly understood the Asiatics. "Away, ye rascals!" he cried in a rage, laying his hand on the butt of his pistol. "Be silent, or the first that dares to let an insult pass his teeth, shall have them closed with a leaden seal!"

This threat, enforced by the bayonets of some of the soldiers, succeeded immediately: they who were timid took to their heels—the bolder held their tongues. Even the orthodox blacksmith, seeing that the affair was becoming serious, looked round on all sides, and muttered "Nedjelaim?" (What can I do?) tucked up his sleeves, pulled out from his bag the hammer and pincers, and began to shoe the Russian's horse, grumbling between his teeth, "Vala billa beetmi eddeem, (I will not do it, by God!)" It must be remarked that all this took place out of Ammalát's presence. He had hardly looked at the Russians, when, in order to avoid a disagreeable rencontre, he mounted the horse which had just been shod, and galloped off to Bouináki, where his house was situated.

While this was taking place at one end of the exercising ground, a horseman rode up to the front of the reposing soldiers. He was of middling stature, but of athletic frame, and was clothed in a shirt of linked mail, his head protected by a helmet, and in full warlike equipment, and followed by five noúkers. By their dusty dress, and the foam which covered their horses, it might be seen that they had ridden far and fast. The first horseman, fixing his eye on the soldiers, advanced slowly along the piles of muskets, upsetting the two pyramids of fire-arms. The noúkers, following the steps of their master, far from turning aside, coolly rode over the scattered weapons. The sentry, who had challenged them while they were yet at some distance, and warned them not to approach, seized the bit of the steed bestridden by the mail-coated horseman, while the rest of the soldiers, enraged at such an insult from a Mussulman, assailed the party with abuse. "Hold hard! Who are you?" was the challenge and question of the sentinel. "Thou must be a raw recruit if thou knowest not Sultan Akhmet Khan of Avár,"²⁷ coolly answered the man in mail, shaking off the hand of the sentry from his reins. "I think last year I left the Russians a keepsake at Báshli. Translate that for him," he said to one of his noúkers. The Aváretz repeated his words in pretty intelligible Russian.

"'Tis Akhmet Khan! Akhmet Khan!" shouted the soldiers. "Seize him! hold him fast! down with him! pay him for the affair of Báshli ²⁸—the villains cut our wounded to pieces."

"Away, brute!" cried Sultan Akhmet Khan to the soldier who had again seized the bridle of his horse—"I am a Russian general."

"A Russian traitor!" roared a multitude of voices; "bring him to the Captain: drag him to Derbend, to Colonel Verkhóffsky."

"'Tis only to hell I would go with such guides!" said Akhmet, with a contemptuous smile, and making his horse rear, he turned him to the right and left; then, with a blow of the nogaik,²⁹ he made him leap into the air, and disappeared. The noúkers kept their eye on the movements of their chief, and uttering their warcry, followed his steps, and overthrowing several of the soldiers, cleared a way for themselves into the road. After galloping off to a distance of scarce a hundred paces, the Khan rode away at a slow walk, with an expression of the greatest sang-froid, not deigning to look back, and coolly playing with his bridle. The crowd of Tartars assembled round the blacksmith attracted his attention. "What are you quarrelling about, friends?" asked Akhmet Khan of the nearest, reining in his horse.

In sign of respect and reverence, they all applied their hands to their foreheads when they saw the Khan. The timid or peaceably disposed among them, dreading the consequences, either from the Russians or the Khan, to which this rencontre might expose them, exhibited much discomfiture at the question; but the idle, the ruffian, and the desperate—for all beheld with hatred the Russian domination—crowded turbulently round him with delight. They hurriedly told him what was the matter.

"And you stand, like buffaloes, stupidly looking on, while they force your brother to work like a brute under the yoke!" exclaimed the Khan, gloomily, to the bystanders; "while they laugh in your face at your customs, and trample your faith under their feet! and ye whine like old women, instead of revenging yourselves like men! Cowards! cowards!"

"What can we do?" cried a multitude of voices together; "the Russians have cannon—they have bayonets!"

"And ye, have ye not guns? have ye not daggers? It is not the Russians that are brave, but ye that are cowards! Shame of Mussulmans! The sword of Daghestán trembles before the Russian whip. Ye are afraid of the roll of the cannon; but ye fear not the reproach of cowardice. The fermán of a Russian prístav ³⁰ is holier to you than a chapter of the Koran. Siberia frightens you more than hell. Did your forefathers act, did your forefathers think thus? They counted not their enemies, they calculated not. Outnumbered or not, they met them, bravely fought them, and gloriously died! And what fear ye? Have the Russians ribs of iron? Have their cannon no breach? Is it not by the tail that you seize the scorpion?" This address stirred the crowd. The Tartar vanity was touched to the quick. "What do we care for them? Why do we let them lord it over us here?" was heard around. "Let us liberate the blacksmith from his work—let us liberate him!" they roared, as they narrowed their circle round the Russian soldiers, amidst whom Alékper was shoeing the captain's horse. The confusion increased. Satisfied with the tumult he had created, Sultan Akhmet Khan, not wishing to mix himself up in an insignificant brawl, rode out of the crowd, leaving two noúkers to keep alive the violent spirit among the Tartars, while, accompanied by the remainder, he rode rapidly to the ootakh ³¹ of Ammalát.

"Mayest thou be victorious," said Sultan Akhmet Khan to Ammalát Bek, who received him at the threshold. This ordinary salutation, in the Circassian language, was pronounced with so marked an emphasis, that Ammalát as he kissed him, asked, "Is that a jest or a prophecy, my fair guest?"

"That depends on thee," replied the Sultan. "It is upon the right heir of the Shamkhalát ³² that it depends to draw the sword from the scabbard."

"To sheath it no more, Khan? An unenviable destiny. Methinks it is better to reign in Bouináki, than for an empty title to be obliged to hide in the mountains like a jackal."

"To bound from the mountains like a lion, Ammalát; and to repose, after your glorious toils, in the palace of your ancestors."

"Would you behold but in a dream what you ought to possess in reality? The Russians are giving you the poppy, and will lull you with tales, while another plucks the golden flowers of the garden."³³

"Force—that is in thy soul, Ammalát!... Despise dangers and they bend before you.... Dost thou hear that?" added Sultan Akhmet Khan, as the sound of firing reached them from the town. "It is the voice of victory!"

"Bouináki is in revolt," he hurriedly began; "a crowd of rioters has overpowered the detachment, and they have begun to fire from the rocks."³⁴

"Rascals!" cried Ammalát, as he threw his gun over his shoulder. "How dared they to rise without me! Run, Saphir-Ali, threaten them with my name; kill the first who disobeys."

"I have done all I could to restrain them," said Saphir-Ali, "but none would listen to me, for the noúkers of Sultan Akhmet Khan were urging them on, saying that he had ordered them to slay the Russians."

"In that case they have done well," replied Sultan Akhmet Khan: "this is brave!"

"With lead and steel.... The firing is begun.... Fate works for you ... the sword is drawn ... let us go seek the Russians!"

"They are here!" cried the Captain, who, followed by two men, had broken through the disorderly ranks of the Tartars, and dashed into the house of their chief. Confounded by the unexpected outbreak in which he was certain to be considered a party, Ammalát saluted his enraged guest—"Come in peace!" he said to him in Tartar.

"I care not whether I come in peace or no," answered the Captain, "but I find no peaceful reception in Bouináki. Thy Tartars, Ammalát, have dared to fire upon a soldier of mine, of yours, a subject of our Tsar."

"In very deed, 'twas absurd to fire on a Russian," said the Khan, contemptuously stretching himself on the cushions of the divan, "when they might have cut his throat."

"Here is the cause of all the mischief, Ammalát!" said the Captain, angrily, pointing to the Khan; "but for this insolent rebel not a trigger would have been pulled in Bouináki! But you have done well, Ammalát Bek, to invite Russians as friends, and to receive their foe as a guest, to shelter him as a comrade, to honour him as a friend! Ammalát Bek, this man is named in the order of the commander-in-chief; give him up."

"Captain," answered Ammalát, "with us a guest is sacred. To give him up would be a sin upon my soul, an ineffaceable shame upon my head; respect my entreaty; respect our customs."

"I will tell you, in your turn—respect the Russian laws. Remember your duty. You have sworn allegiance to the Tsar, and your oath obliges you not to spare your own brother if he is a criminal."

"Rather would I give up my brother than my guest, Sir Captain! It is not for you to judge my promises and obligations. My tribunal is Allah and the padishah! In the field, let fortune take care of the Khan; but within my threshold, beneath my roof, I am bound to be his protector, and I will be!"

The Khan had lain in haughty silence during this dispute, breathing the smoke from his pipe: but at the word "traitor," his blood was fired, he started up, and rushed indignantly to the Captain.

"Traitor, say you?" he cried. "Say rather, that I refused to betray him to whom I was bound by promise. The Russian padishah gave me rank, the sardar ³⁵ caressed me—and I was faithful so long as they demanded of me nothing impossible or humiliating. But, all of a sudden, they wished me to admit troops into Avár—to permit fortresses to be built there; and what name should I have deserved, if I had sold the blood and sweat of the Aváretzes, my brethren! If I had attempted this, think ye that I could have done it? A thousand free daggers, a thousand unhired bullets, would have flown to the heart of the betrayer. The very rocks would have fallen on the son who could betray his father. I refused the friendship of the Russians; but I was not their enemy—and what was the reward of my just intentions, my honest counsels? I was deeply, personally insulted by the letter of one of your generals, whom I had warned. That insolence cost him dear at Báshli ... I shed a river of blood for some few drops of insulting ink, and that river divides us for ever."

"That blood cries for vengeance!" replied the enraged Captain. "Thou shalt not escape it, robber!"

"Nor thou from me!" shouted the infuriated Khan, plunging his dagger into the body of the Captain, as he lifted his hand to seize him by the collar. Severely wounded, the officer fell groaning on the carpet.

"Thou hast undone me!" cried Ammalát, wringing his hands. "He is a Russian, and my guest!"

"There are insults which a roof cannot cover," sullenly replied the Khan. "The die is cast: it is no time to hesitate. Shut your gate, call your people, and let us attack the enemy."

"An hour ago I had no enemy ... there are no means now for repulsing them ... I have neither powder nor ball ... The people are dispersed."

"They have fled!" cried Saphir-Ali in despair. "The Russians are advancing at full march over the hill. They are close at hand!"

"If so, go with me, Ammalát!" said the Khan. "I rode to Tchetchná yesterday, to raise the revolt along the line ... What will be the end, God knows; but there is bread in the mountains. Do you consent?"

"Let us go!" ... replied Ammalát, resolvedly.... "When our only safety is in flight, it is no time for disputes and reproaches."

"And am I to go with you?" said Saphir-Ali, with tears in his eyes—"with you for weal or woe!"

"No, my good Saphir-Ali, no. Remain you here to govern the household, that our people and the strangers may not seize every thing. Give my greeting to my wife, and take her to my father-in-law, the Shamkhál. Forget me not, and farewell!"

They had barely time to escape at full gallop by one gate, when the Russians dashed in at the other.

CHAPTER II.

The vernal noon was shining upon the peaks of Caucasus, and the loud voices of the moollahs had called the inhabitants of Tchetchná to prayer. By degrees they came forth from the mosques, and though invisible to each other from the towers on which they stood, their solitary voices, after awaking for a moment the echoes of the hills, sank to stillness in the silent air.

The moollah, Hadji Suleiman, a Turkish devotee, one of those missionaries annually sent into the mountains by the Divan of Stamboul, to spread and strengthen the faith, and to increase the detestation felt by the inhabitants for the Russians, was reposing on the roof of the mosque, having performed the usual call, ablution, and prayer. He had not been long installed as moollah of Igáli, a village of Tchetchná; and plunged in a deep contemplation of his hoary beard, and the circling smoke-wreaths that rose from his pipe, he gazed from time to time with a curious interest on the mountains, and on the defiles which lay towards the north, right before his eyes. On the left arose the precipitous ridges dividing Tchetchná from Avár, and beyond them glittered the snows of Caucasus; sáklas scattered disorderly along the ridges half-way up the mountain, and narrow paths led to these fortresses built by nature, and employed by the hill-robbers to defend their liberty, or secure their plunder. All was still in the village and the surrounding hills; there was not a human being to be seen on the roads or streets; flocks of sheep were reposing in the shade of the cliffs; the buffaloes were crowded in the muddy swamps near the springs, with only their muzzles protruded from the marsh. Nought save the hum of the insects—nought save the monotonous chirp of the grasshoppers indicated life amid the breathless silence of the mountains; and Hadji Suleiman, stretched under the cupola, was intensely enjoying the stillness and repose of nature, so congenial to the lazy immobility of the Turkish character. Indolently he turned his eyes, whose fire was extinguished, and which no longer reflected the light of the sun, and at length they fell upon two horsemen, slowly climbing the opposite side of the declivity.

"Néphtali!" cried our Moollah, turning towards a neighbouring sákla, at the gate of which stood a saddled horse. And then a handsome Tchetchenetz, with short cut beard, and shaggy cap covering half his face, ran out into the street. "I see two horsemen," continued the Moollah; "they are riding round the village!"

"Most likely Jews or Armenians," answered Néphtali. "They do not choose to hire a guide, and will break their necks in the winding road. The wild-goats, and our boldest riders, would not plunge into these recesses without precaution."

"No, brother Néphtali; I have been twice to Mecca, and have seen plenty of Jews and Armenians every where. But these riders look not like Hebrew chafferers, unless, indeed, they exchange steel for gold in the mountain road. They have no bales of merchandise. Look at them yourself from above; your eyes are surer than mine; mine have had their day, and done their work. There was a time when I could count the buttons on a Russian soldier's coat a verst off, and my rifle never missed an infidel; but now I could not distinguish a ram of my own afar."

By this time Néphtali was at the side of the Moollah, and was examining the travellers with an eagle glance.

"The noonday is hot, and the road rugged," said Suleiman; "invite the travellers to refresh themselves and their horses: perhaps they have news: besides, the Koran commands us to show hospitality."

"With us in the mountains, and before the Koran, never did a stranger leave a village hungry or sad; never did he depart without tchourek,³⁶ without blessing, without a guide; but these people are suspicious: why do they avoid honest men, and pass our village by by-roads, and with danger to their life?"

"It seems that they are your countrymen," said Suleiman, shading his eyes with his hand: "their dress is Tchetchná. Perhaps they are returning from a plundering exhibition, to which your father went with a hundred of his neighbours; or perhaps they are brothers, going to revenge blood for blood."

"No, Suleiman, that is not like us. Could a mountaineer's heart refrain from coming to see his countrymen—to boast of his exploits against the Russians, and to show his booty? These are neither avengers of blood nor Abreks—their faces are not covered by the báshlik; besides, dress is deceptive. Who can tell that those are not Russian deserters! The other day a Kázak, who had murdered his master, fled from Goumbet-Aoúl with his horse and arms.... The devil is strong!"

"He is strong in them in whom the faith is weak, Néphtali;—yet, if I mistake not, the hinder horseman has hair flowing from under his cap."

"May I be pounded to dust, but it is so! It is either a Russian, or, what is worse, a Tartar Shageed.³⁷ Stop a moment, my friend; I will comb your zilflárs for you! In half-an-hour I will return, Suleiman, either with them,—or one of us three shall feed the mountain berkoots (eagles.)"

Néphtali rushed down the stairs, threw the gun on his shoulders, leapt into his saddle and dashed down the hill, caring neither for furrow nor stone. Only the dust arose, and the pebbles streamed down after the bold horseman."

Néphtali soon came up with the strangers. Their horses were covered with foam, and the sweat-drops rained from them on the narrow path by which they were climbing the mountain. The first was clothed in a shirt of mail, the other in the Circassian dress: except that he wore a Persian sabre instead of a sháshka,³⁸ suspended by a laced girdle. His left arm was covered with blood, bound up with a handkerchief, and supported by the sword-knot. The faces of both were concealed. For some time he rode behind them along the slippery path, which overhung a precipice; but at the first open space he galloped by them, and turned his horse round. "Salám aleikom!" said he, opposing their passage along the rugged and half-built road among the rocks, as he made ready his arms. The foremost horseman suddenly wrapped his boúrka ³⁹ round his face, so as to leave visible only his knit brows: "Aleikom Salám!" answered he, cocking his gun, and fixing himself in the saddle.

"God give you a good journey!" said Néphtali. repeating the usual salutation, and preparing, at the first hostile movement, to shoot the stranger.

"God give you enough of sense not to interrupt the traveller," replied his antagonist, impatiently: "What would you with us, Kounák?"⁴⁰

"I offer you rest, and a brother's repast, barley and stalls for your horses. My threshold flourishes by hospitality: the blessing of the stranger increaseth the flock, and giveth sharpness to the sword of the master. Fix not the seal of reproach on our whole village. Let them not say, 'They have seen travellers in the heat of noon, and have not refreshed them nor sheltered them.'"

"We thank you for your kindness; but we are not wont to take forced hospitality; and haste is even more necessary for us than rest."

"Guide!" exclaimed the traveller; "I know every step of the Caucasus. I have been where your serpents climb not, your tigers cannot mount, your eagles cannot fly. Make way, comrade: thy threshold is not on God's high-road, and I have no time to prate with thee."

"Insolent scoundrel, out of my way, or thy mother shall beg thy bones from the jackall and the wind! Thank your luck, Néphtali, that thy father and I have eaten one another's salt; and often have ridden by his side in the battle. Unworthy son! thou art rambling about the roads, and ready to attack the peaceable travellers, while thy father's corse lies rotting on the fields of Russia, and the wives of the Kazáks are selling his arms in the bazar. Néphtali, thy father was slain yesterday beyond the Térek. Dost thou know me now?"

"Sultan Akhmet Khan!" cried the Tchetchenetz, struck by the piercing look and by the terrible news. His voice was stifled, and he fell forward on his horse's neck in inexpressible grief.

"Yes, I am Sultan Akhmet Khan! but grave this in your memory, Néphtali—that if you say to any one, 'I have seen the Khan of Avár,' my vengeance will live from generation to generation."

The strangers passed on, the Khan in silence, plunged, as it seemed, in painful recollections; Ammalát (for it was he) in gloomy thought. The dress of both bore witness to recent fighting; their mustaches were singed by the priming, and splashes of blood had dried upon their faces; but the proud look of the first seemed to defy to the combat fate and chance; a gloomy smile, of hate mingled with scorn, contracted his lip. On the other hand, on the features of Ammalát exhaustion was painted. He could hardly turn his languid eyes; and from time to time a groan escaped him, caused by the pain of his wounded arm. The uneasy pace of the Tartar horse, unaccustomed to the mountain roads, renewed the torment of his wound. He was the first to break the silence.

"Why have you refused the offer of these good people? We might have stopped an hour or two to repose, and at dewfall we could have proceeded."

"You think so, because you feel like a young man, dear Ammalát: you are used to rule your Tartars like slaves, and you fancy that you can conduct yourself with the same ease among the free mountaineers. The hand of fate weighs heavily upon us;—we are defeated and flying. Hundreds of brave mountaineers—your noúkers and my own—have fallen in fight with the Russians; and the Tchetchenetz has seen turned to flight the face of Sultan Akhmet Khan, which they are wont to behold the star of victory! To accept the beggar's repast, perhaps to hear reproaches for the death of fathers and sons, carried away by me in this rash expedition—'twould be to lose their confidence for ever. Time will pass, tears will dry up; the thirst of vengeance will take place of grief for the dead; and then again Sultan Akhmet will be seen the prophet of plunder and of blood. Then again the battle-signal shall echo through the mountains, and I shall once more lead flying bands of avengers into the Russian limits. If I go now, in the moment of defeat, the Tchetchenetz will judge that Allah giveth and taketh away victory. They may offend me by rash words, and with me an offence is ineffaceable; and the revenge of a personal offence would obstruct the road that leads me to the Russians. Why, then, provoke a quarrel with a brave people—and destroy the idol of glory on which they are wont to gaze with rapture? Never does man appear so mean as in weakness, when every one can measure his strength with him fearlessly: besides, you need a skilful leech, and nowhere will you find a better than at my house. To-morrow we shall be at home; have patience until then."

With a gesture of gratitude Ammalát Bek placed his hand upon his heart and forehead: he perfectly felt the truth of the Khan's words, but exhaustion for many hours had been overwhelming him. Avoiding the villages, they passed the night among the rocks, eating a handful of millet boiled in honey, without the mountaineers seldom set out on a journey. Crossing the Koi-Soú by the bridge near the Asheért, quitting its northern branch, and leaving behind them Andéh, and the country of the Boulinétzes of the Koi-Soú, and the naked chain of Salataóu. A rude path lay before them, winding among forests and cliffs terrible to body and soul; and they began to climb the last chain which separated them on the north from Khounzákh or Avár, the capital of the Khans. The forest, and then the underwood, had gradually disappeared from the naked flint of the mountain, on which cloud and tempest could hardly wander. To reach the summit, our travellers were compelled to ride alternately to the right and to the left, so precipitous was the ascent of the rocks. The experienced steed of the Khan stepped cautiously and surely from stone to stone, feeling his way with his hoofs, and when they slipped, gliding on his haunches down the declivities: while the ardent fiery horse of Ammalát, trained in the hills of Daghestán, fretted, curveted, and slipped. Deprived of his customary grooming, he could not support a two days' flight under the intense cold and burning sunshine of the mountains, travelling among sharp rocks, and nourished only by the scanty herbage of the crevices. He snorted heavily as he climbed higher and higher; the sweat streamed from his poitrel; his large nostrils were dry and parched, and foam boiled from his bit. "Allah berekét!" exclaimed Ammalát, as he reached the crest from which there opened before him a view of Avár: but at the very moment his exhausted horse fell under him; the blood spouted from his open mouth, and his last breath burst the saddle-girth.

The Khan assisted the Bek to extricate himself from the stirrups; but observed with alarm that his efforts had displaced the bandage on Ammalát's wounded arm, and that the blood was soaking through it afresh. The young man, it seemed, was insensible to pain; tears were rolling down his face upon the dead horse. So one drop fills not, but overflows the cup. "Thou wilt never more bear me like down upon the wind," he said, "nor hear behind thee from the dust-cloud of the race, the shouts, unpleasing to the rival, the acclamations of the people: in the blaze of battle no more shalt thou carry me from the iron rain of the Russian cannon. With thee I gained the fame of a warrior—why should I survive, or it, or thee?" He bent his face upon his knee, and remained silent a long time, while the Khan carefully bound up his wounded arm: at length Ammalát raised his head: "Leave me!" he cried, resolutely: "leave, Sultan Akhmet Khan, a wretch to his fate! The way is long, and I am exhausted. By remaining with me, you will perish in vain. See! the eagle soars around us; he knows that my heart will soon quiver beneath his talons, and I thank God! Better find an airy grave in the maw of a bird of prey, than leave my corse beneath a Christian foot. Farewell, linger not."

"For shame, Ammalát! you trip against a straw....! What the great harm? You are wounded, and your horse is dead. Your wound will soon healed, and we will find you a better horse! Allah sendeth not misfortunes alone. In the flower of your age, and the full vigour of your faculties, it is a sin to despair. Mount my horse, I will lead him by the bridle, and by night we shall be at home. Time is precious!"

"For me, time is no more, Sultan Ahkmet Khan ... I thank you heartily for your brotherly care, but I cannot take advantage of it ... you yourself cannot support a march on foot after such fatigue. I repeat ... leave me to my fate. Here, on these inaccessible heights, I will die free and contented ... And what is there to recall me to life! My parents lie under the earth, my wife is blind, my uncle and father-in-law the Shamkhál are cowering at Tarki before the Russians ... the Giaour is revelling in my native land, in my inheritance; and I myself an a wanderer from my home, a runaway from battle. I neither can, nor ought to live."

"You ought not to talk such nonsense, dear Ammalát:—and nothing but fever can excuse you. We are created that we may live longer than our fathers. For wives, if one has not teazed you enough, we will find you three more. If you love not the Shamkhál, yet love your own inheritance—you ought to live, if but for that; since to a dead man power is useless, and victory impossible. Revenge on the Russians is a holy duty: live, if but for that. That we are beaten, is no novelty for a warrior; to-day luck is theirs, to-morrow it falls to us. Allah gives fortune; but a man creates his own glory, not by fortune, but by firmness. Take courage, my friend Ammalát.... You are wounded and weak; I am strong from habit, and not fatigued by flight. Mount! and we may yet live to beat the Russians."

The colour returned to Ammalát's face ... "Yes, I will live for revenge!" he cried: "for revenge both secret and open. Believe me, Sultan Akhmet Khan, it is only for this that I accept your generosity! Henceforth I am yours; I swear by the graves of my fathers.... I am yours! Guide my steps, direct the strokes of my arm; and if ever, drowned in softness, I forget my oath, remind me of this moment, of this mountain peak: Ammalát Bek will awake, and his dagger will be lightning!"

The Khan embraced him, as he lifted the excited youth into the saddle. "Now I behold in you the pure blood of the Emírs!" said he: "the burning blood of their children, which flows in our veins like the sulphur in the entrails of the rocks, which, ever and anon inflaming, shakes and topples down the crags." Steadying with one hand the wounded man in the saddle, the Khan began cautiously to descend the rugged croft. Occasionally the stones fell rattling from under their feet, or the horse slid downward over the smooth granite, so that they were well pleased to reach the mossy slopes. By degrees, creeping plants began to appear, spreading their green sheets; and, waving from the crevices like fans, they hung down in long ringlets like ribbons or flags. At length they reached a thick wood of nut-trees; then came the oak, the wild cherry, and, lower still, the tchinár,⁴¹ and the tchindár. The variety, the wealth of vegetation, and the majestic silence of the umbrageous forest, produced a kind of involuntary adoration of the wild strength of nature. Ever and anon, from the midnight darkness of the boughs, there dawned, like the morning, glimpses of meadows, covered with a fragrant carpet of flowers untrodden by the foot of man. The pathway at one time lost itself in the depth of the thicket; at another, crept forth upon the edge of the rock, below which gleamed and murmured a rivulet, now foaming over the stones, then again slumbering on its rocky bed, under the shade of the barberry and the eglantine. Pheasants, sparkling with their rainbow tails, flitted from shrub to shrub; flights of wild pigeons flew over the crags, sometimes in an horizontal troop, sometimes like a column, rising to the sky; and sunset flooded all with its airy purple, and light mists began to rise from the narrow gorges: every thing breathed the freshness of evening. Our travellers were now near the village of Aki, and separated only by a hill from Khounzákh. A low crest alone divided them from that village, when the report of a gun resounded from the mountain, and, like an ominous signal, was repeated by the echoes of the cliffs. The travellers halted irresolute: the echoes by degrees sank into stillness. "Our hunters!" cried Sultan Akhmet Khan, wiping the sweat from his face: "they expect me not, and think not to meet me here! Many tears of joy, and many of sorrow, do I bear to Khounzákh!" Unfeigned sorrow was expressed in the face of Akhmet Khan. Vividly does every soft and every savage sentiment play on the features of the Asiatic.

Another report soon interrupted his meditation; then another, and another. Shot answered shot, and at length thickened into a warm fire. "'Tis the Russians!" cried Ammalát, drawing his sabre. He pressed his horse with the stirrup, as though he would have leaped over the ridge at a single bound; but in a moment his strength failed him, and the blade fell ringing on the ground, as his arm dropped heavily by his side. "Khan!" said he, dismounting, "go to the succour of your people; your face will be worth more to them than a hundred warriors."

The Khan heard him not; he was listening intently for the flight of the balls, as if he would distinguish those of the Russian from the Avárian. "Have they, besides the agility of the goat, stolen the wings of the eagle of Kazbéc? Can they have reached our inaccessible fastnesses?" said he, leaning to the saddle, with his foot already in the stirrup. "Farewell, Ammalát!" he cried at length, listening to the firing, which now grew hotter: "I go to perish on the ruins I have made, after striking like a thunderbolt!" At this moment a bullet whistled by, and fell at his feet. Bending down and picking it up, his face was lighted with a smile. He quietly took his foot from the stirrup, and turning to Ammalát, "Mount!" said he, "you shall presently find with your own eyes an answer to this riddle. The Russian bullets are of lead; but this is copper ⁴²—an Aváretz, my dear countryman. Besides, it comes from the south, where the Russians cannot be."

They ascended to the summit of the crest, and before their view opened two villages, situated on the opposite sides of a deep ravine; from behind them came the firing. The inhabitants sheltering themselves behind rocks and hedges, were firing at each other. Between them the women were incessantly running, sobbing and weeping when any combatant, approaching the edge of the ravine, fell wounded. They carried stones, and, regardless of the whistling of the balls, fearlessly piled them up, so as to make a kind of defence. Cries of joy arose from one side or the other, as a wounded adversary was carried from the field; a groan of sorrow ascended in the air when one of their kinsmen or comrades was hit. Ammalát gazed at the combat for some time with surprise, a combat in which there was a great deal more noise than execution. At length he turned an enquiring eye upon the Khan.

"With us these are everyday affairs!" he answered, delightedly marking each report. "Such skirmishes cherish among us a warlike spirit and warlike habits. With you, private quarrels end in a few blows of the dagger; among us they become the common business of whole villages, and any trifle is enough to occasion them. Probably they are fighting about some cow that has been stolen. With us it is no disgrace to steal in another village—the shame is, to be found out. Admire the coolness of our women; the balls are whizzing about like gnats, yet they pay no attention to them! Worthy wives and mothers of brave men! To be sure, there would be eternal disgrace to him who could wound a woman, yet no man can answer for a ball. A sharp eye may aim it; but blind chance carries it to the mark. But darkness is falling from heaven, and dividing these enemies for a moment. Let us hasten to my kinsmen."

Nothing but the experience of the Khan could have saved our travellers from frequent falls in the precipitous descent to the river Ouzén. Ammalát could see scarcely any thing before him; the double veil of night and weakness enveloped his eyes; his head turned: he beheld, as it were in a dream, when they again mounted an eminence, the gate and watch-tower of the Khan's house. With an uncertain foot he dismounted in a courtyard, surrounded by shouting noúkers and attendants; and he had hardly stepped over the grated threshold when his breath failed him—a deadly paleness poured its snow over the wounded man's face; and the young Bek, exhausted by loss of blood, fatigued by travel, hunger, and anguish of soul, fell senseless on the embroidered carpets.

POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.

No. VI.

THE LAY OF THE BELL.

Fast, in its prison-walls of earth,

Awaits the mould of bakèd clay.

Up, comrades, up, and aid the birth—

THE BELL that shall be born to-day!

And wearily now,

With the sweat of the brow,

Shall the work win its grace in the master's eye,

But the blessing that hallows must come from high.

And well an earnest word beseems

The work the earnest hand prepares;

Its load more light the labour deems,

When sweet discourse the labour shares.

So let us ponder—nor in vain—

What strength has wrought when labour wills;

For who would not the fool disdain

Who ne'er can feel what he fulfills?

And well it stamps our Human Race,

And hence the gift TO UNDERSTAND,

When in the musing heart we trace

Whate'er we fashion with the hand.

From the fir the fagot take,

Keep it, heap it hard and dry,

That the gather'd flame may break

Through the furnace, wroth and high.

Smolt the copper within—

Quick—the brass with the tin,

That the glutinous fluid that feeds the Bell

May flow in the right course glib and well.

What now these mines so deeply shroud,

What Force with Fire is moulding thus,

Shall from yon steeple, oft and loud,

Speak, witnessing of us!

It shall, in later days unfailing,

Rouse many an ear to rapt emotion;

Its solemn voice with Sorrow wailing,

Or choral chiming to Devotion.

Whatever sound in man's deep breast

Fate wakens, through his winding track,

Shall strike that metal-crownèd crest,

Which rings the moral answer back.

See the silvery bubbles spring!

Good! the mass is melting now!

Let the salts we duly bring

Purge the flood, and speed the flow.

From the dross and the scum,

Pure, the fusion must come;

For perfect and pure we the metal must keep,

That its voice may be perfect, and pure, and deep.

That voice, with merry music rife,

The cherish'd child shall welcome in;

What time the rosy dreams of life,

In the first slumber's arms begin.

As yet in Time's dark womb unwarning,

Repose the days, or foul or fair;

And watchful o'er that golden morning,

The Mother-Love's untiring care!

And swift the years like arrows fly—

No more with girls content to play,

Bounds the proud Boy upon his way,

Storms through loud life's tumultuous pleasures,

With pilgrim staff the wide world measures;

And, wearied with the wish to roam,

Again seeks, stranger-like, the Father-Home.

And, lo, as some sweet vision breaks

Out from its native morning skies,

With rosy shame on downcast cheeks,

The Virgin stands before his eyes.

A nameless longing seizes him!

From all his wild companions flown;

Tears, strange till then, his eyes bedim;

He wanders all alone.

Blushing, he glides where'er she move;

Her greeting can transport him;

To every mead to deck his love,

The happy wild flowers court him!

Sweet Hope—and tender Longing—ye

The growth of Life's first Age of Gold;

When the heart, swelling, seems to see

The gates of heaven unfold!

O Love, the beautiful and brief! O prime,

Glory, and verdure, of life's summer time!

Browning o'er the pipes are simmering,

Dip this fairy rod within;

If like glass the surface glimmering,

Then the casting may begin.

Brisk, brisk to the rest—

Quick!—the fusion to test;

And welcome, my merry men, welcome the sign,

If the ductile and brittle united combine.

For still where the strong is betrothed to the weak,

And the stern in sweet marriage is blent with the meek,

Rings the concord harmonious, both tender and strong:

So be it with thee, if for ever united,

The heart to the heart flows in one, love-delighted;

Illusion is brief, but Repentance is long.

Lovely, thither are they bringing,

With her virgin wreath, the Bride!

To the love-feast clearly ringing,

Tolls the church-bell far and wide!

With that sweetest holyday,

Must the May of Life depart;

With the cestus loosed—away

Flies ILLUSION from the heart!

Yet Love lingers lonely,

When Passion is mute,

And the blossoms may only

Give way to the fruit.

The Husband must enter

The hostile life,

With struggle and strife,

To plant or to watch,

To snare or to snatch,

To pray and importune,

Must wager and venture

And hunt down his fortune!

Then flows in a current the gear and the gain,

And the garners are fill'd with the gold of the grain,

Now a yard to the court, now a wing to the centre!

Within sits Another,

The thrifty Housewife;

The mild one, the mother—

Her home is her life.

In its circle she rules,

And the daughters she schools,

And she cautions the boys,

With a bustling command,

And a diligent hand

Employ'd she employs;

Gives order to store,

And the much makes the more;

Locks the chest and the wardrobe, with lavender smelling,

And the hum of the spindle goes quick through the dwelling;

And she hoards in the presses, well polish'd and full,

The snow of the linen, the shine of the wool;

Blends the sweet with the good, and from care and endeavour

Rests never!

Blithe the Master (where the while

From his roof he sees them smile)

Eyes the lands, and counts the gain;

There, the beams projecting far,

And the laden store-house are,

And the granaries bow'd beneath

The blessings of the golden grain;

There, in undulating motion,

Wave the corn-fields like an ocean.

Proud the boast the proud lips breathe:—

"My house is built upon a rock,

And sees unmoved the stormy shock

Of waves that fret below!"

What chain so strong, what girth so great,

To bind the giant form of Fate?—

Swift are the steps of Woe.

Now the casting may begin;

See the breach indented there:

Ere we run the fusion in,

Halt—and speed the pious prayer!

Pull the bung out—

See around and about

What vapour, what vapour—God help us!—has risen?—

Ha! the flame like a torrent leaps forth from its prison!

What, friend, is like the might of fire

When man can watch and wield the ire?

Whate'er we shape or work, we owe

Still to that heaven-descended glow.

But dread the heaven-descended glow,

When from their chain its wild wings go,

When, where it listeth, wide and wild

Sweeps the free Nature's free-born Child!

When the Frantic One fleets,

While no force can withstand,

Through the populous streets

Whirling ghastly the brand;

For the Element hates

What Man's labour creates,

And the work of his hand!

Impartially out from the cloud,

Or the curse or the blessing may fall!

Benignantly out from the cloud

Come the dews, the revivers of all!

Avengingly our from the cloud

Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball!

Hark—a wail from the steeple!—aloud

The bell shrills its voice to the crowd!

Look—look—red as blood

All on high!

It is not the daylight that fills with its flood

The sky!

What a clamour awaking

Roars up through the street,

What a hell-vapour breaking

Rolls on through the street,

And higher and higher

Aloft moves the Column of Fire!

Through the vistas and rows

Like a whirlwind it goes,

And the air like the steam from a furnace glows.

Beams are crackling—posts are shrinking—

Walls are sinking—windows clinking—

Children crying—

Mothers flying—

And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under)

Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder!

Hurry and skurry—away—away,

And the face of the night is as clear as day!

As the links in a chain,

Again and again

Flies the bucket from hand to hand;

High in arches up rushing

The engines are gushing,

And the flood, as a beast on the prey that it hounds,

With a road on the breast of the element bounds.

To the grain and the fruits,

Through the rafters and beams,

Through the barns and the garners it crackles and streams!

As if they would rend up the earth from its roots,

Rush the flames to the sky

Giant-high;

And at length,

Wearied out and despairing, man bows to their strength!

With an idle gaze sees their wrath consume,

And submits to his doom!

Desolate

The place, and dread

For storms the barren bed.

In the deserted gaps that casements were,

Looks forth despair;

And, where the roof hath been,

Peer the pale clouds within!

One look

Upon the grave

Of all that Fortune gave

The loiterer took—

Then grasps his staff. Whate'er the fire bereft,

One blessing, sweeter than all else, is left—

The faces that he loves! He counts them o'er—

And, see—not one dear look is missing from that store!

Now clasp'd the bell within the clay—

The mould the mingled metals fill—

Oh, may it, sparkling into day,

Reward the labour and the skill!

Alas! should it fail,

For the mould may be frail—

And still with our hope must be mingled the fear—

And, even now, while we speak, the mishap may be near!

To the dark womb of sacred earth

This labour of our hands is given,

As seeds that wait the second birth,

And turn to blessings watch'd by heaven!

Ah seeds, how dearer far than they

We bury in the dismal tomb,

Where Hope and Sorrow bend to pray

That suns beyond the realm of day

May warm them into bloom!

From the steeple

Tolls the bell,

Deep and heavy,

The death-knell!

Measured and solemn, guiding up the road

A wearied wanderer to the last abode.

It is that worship'd wife—

It is that faithful mother!⁴³

Whom the dark Prince of Shadows leads benighted,

From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted.

Far from those blithe companions, born

Of her, and blooming in their morn;

On whom, when couch'd, her heart above

So often look'd the Mother-Love!

Ah! rent the sweet Home's union-band,

And never, never more to come—

She dwells within the shadowy land,

Who was the Mother of that Home!

How oft they miss that tender guide,

The care—the watch—the face—the MOTHER—

And where she sate the babes beside,

Sits with unloving looks—ANOTHER!

While the mass is cooling now,

Let the labour yield to leisure,

As the bird upon the bough,

Loose the travail to the pleasure.

When the soft stars awaken,

Each task be forsaken!

And the vesper-bell lulling the earth into peace,

If the master still toil, chimes the workman's release!

Gleesome and gay,

On the welcoming way,

Through the wood glides the wanderer home!

And the eye and ear are meeting,

Now, the slow sheep homeward bleating—

Now, the wonted shelter near,

Lowing the lusty-fronted steer;

Creaking now the heavy wain,

Reels with the happy harvest grain.

Which with many-coloured leaves,

Glitters the garland on the sheaves;

And the mower and the maid

Bound to the dance beneath the shade!

Desert street, and quiet mart;—

Silence is in the city's heart;

Round the taper burning cheerly,

Gather the groups HOME loves so dearly;

And the gate the town before

Heavily swings with sullen roar!

Though darkness is spreading

O'er earth—the Upright

And the Honest, undreading,

Look safe on the night.

Which the evil man watching in awe,

For the Eye of the Night is the Law!

Bliss-dower'd: O daughter of the skies,

Hail, holy ORDER, whose employ

Blends like to like in light and joy—

Builder of Cities, who of old

Call'd the wild man from waste and wold.

And in his hut thy presence stealing,

Roused each familiar household feeling;

And, best of all the happy ties,

The centre of the social band,—

The Instinct of the Fatherland!

United thus—each helping each,

Brisk work the countless hands for ever;

For nought its power to strength can teach,

Like Emulation and Endeavour!

Thus link'd the master with the man,

Each in his rights can each revere,

And while they march in freedom's van,

Scorn the lewd rout that dogs the rear!

To freemen labour is renown!

Who works—gives blessings and commands;

Kings glory in the orb and crown—

Be ours the glory of our hands.

Long in these walls—long may we greet

Your footfalls, Peace and concord sweet!

Distant the day, Oh! distant far,

When the rude hordes of trampling War

Shall scare the silent vale;

And where,

Now the sweet heaven when day doth leave

The air;

Limns its soft rose-hues on the veil of Eve;

Shall the fierce war-brand tossing in the gale,

From town and hamlet shake the horrent glare!

Now, its destined task fulfill'd,

Asunder break the prison-mould;

Let the goodly Bell we build,

Eye and heart alike behold.

The hammer down heave,

Till the cover it cleave.

For the Bell to rise up to the freedom of day,

Destruction must seize on the shape of the clay.

To break the mould, the master may,

If skilled the hand and ripe the hour;

But woe, when on its fiery way

The metal seeks itself to pour.

Frantic and blind, with thunder-knell,

Exploding from its shattered home,

And glaring forth, as from a hell,

Behold the red Destruction come!

When rages strength that has no reason,

There breaks the mould before the season;

When numbers burst what bound before,

Woe to the State that thrives no more!

Yea, woe, when in the City's heart,

The latent spark to flame is blown;

And Millions from their silence start,

To claim, without a guide, their own!

Discordant howls the warning Bell,

Proclaiming discord wide and far,

And, born but things of peace to tell,

Becomes the ghastliest voice of war:

"Freedom! Equality!"—to blood,

Rush the roused people at the sound!

Through street, hall, palace, roars the flood,

And banded murder closes round!

The hyæna-shapes, that women were!

Jest with the horrors they survey;

They hound—they rend—they mangle there—

As panthers with their prey!

Nought rests to hallow—burst the ties

Of life's sublime and reverent awe;

Before the Vice the Virtue flies,

And Universal Crime is Law!

Man fears the lion's kingly tread;

Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;

And still the dreadliest of the dread,

Is Man himself in error!

No torch, though lit from Heaven, illumes

The Blind!—Why place it in his hand?

It lights not him—it but consumes

The City and the Land!

Rejoice and laud the prospering skies!

The kernel bursts its husk—behold

From the dull clay the metal rise,

Clear shining, as a star of gold!

Neck and lip, but as one beam,

It laughs like a sun-beam.

And even the scutcheon, clear graven, shall tell

That the art of a master has fashion'd the Bell!

Come in—come in

My merry men—we'll form a ring

The new-born labour christening;

And "CONCORD" we will name her!—

To union may her heart-felt call

In brother-love attune us all!

May she the destined glory win

For which the master sought to frame her—

Aloft—(all earth's existence under,)

In blue-pavilion'd heaven afar

To dwell—the Neighbour of the Thunder,

The Borderer of the Star!

Be hers above a voice to raise

Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere,

Who, while they move, their Maker praise,

And lead around the wreathèd year!

To solemn and eternal things

We dedicate her lips sublime!—

To fan—as hourly on she swings

The silent plumes of Time!—

No pulse—no heart—no feeling hers!

She lends the warning voice to Fate;

And still companions, while she stirs,

The changes of the Human State!

So may she teach us, as her tone

But now so mighty, melts away—

That earth no life which earth has known

From the Last Silence can delay!

Slowly now the cords upheave her!

From her earth-grave soars the Bell;

Mid the airs of Heaven we leave her

In the Music-Realm to dwell!

Up—upwards—yet raise—

She has risen—she sways.

Fair Bell to our city bode joy and increase,

And oh, may thy first sound be hallow'd to—PEACE!⁴⁴

VOTIVE TABLETS.

What the God taught me—what, through life, my friend

And aid hath been,

With pious hand, and grateful, I suspend

The temple walls within.

THE GOOD AND THE BEAUTIFUL.

Foster the Good, and thou shalt tend the Flower

Already sown on earth;—

Foster the Beautiful, and every hour

Thou call'st new flowers to birth!

TO ——.

Give me that which thou know'st—I'll receive and attend;—

But thou giv'st me thyself—pri'thee spare me, my friend.

GENIUS.

That which hath been can INTELLECT declare,

What Nature built—it imitates or gilds—

And REASON builds o'er Nature—but in air—

Genius alone in Nature—Nature builds.

CORRECTNESS—(Free translation.)

The calm correctness where no fault we see

Attests Art's loftiest—or its least degree;

Alike the smoothness of the surface shows

The Pool's dull stagnor—the great Sea's repose!

THE IMITATOR.

Good out of good—that art is known to all—

But Genius from the bad the good can call—

Thou, mimic, not from leading strings escaped,

Work'st but the matter that's already shaped!

The already shaped a nobler hand awaits—

All matter asks a spirit that creates.

THE MASTER.

The herd of Scribes by what they tell us

Show all in which their wits excel us;

But the true Master we behold

In what his art leaves—just untold!

TO THE MYSTIC.

That is the real mystery which around

All life, is found;—

Which still before all eyes for aye has been,

Nor eye hath seen!

ASTRONOMICAL WORKS.

All measureless, all infinite in awe,

Heaven to great souls is given—

And yet the sprite of littleness can draw

Down to its inch—the Heaven!

THE DIVISION OF RANKS.

Yes, there's a patent of nobility

Above the meanness of our common state;

With what they do the vulgar natures buy

Its titles—and with what they are, the great!

THEOPHANY.

When draw the Prosperous near me, I forget

The gods of heaven; but where

Sorrow and suffering in my sight are set,

The gods, I feel, are there!

THE CHIEF END OF MAN.

What the chief end of Man?—Behold yon tree,

And let it teach thee, Friend!

Will what that will-less yearns for;—and for thee

Is compass'd Man's chief end!

ULYSSES.

To gain his home all oceans he explored—

Here Scylla frown'd—and there Charybdis roar'd;

Horror on sea—and horror on the land—

In hell's dark boat he sought the spectre land,

Till borne—a slumberer—to his native spot

He woke—and sorrowing, knew his country not!

JOVE TO HERCULES.

'Twas not my nectar made thy strength divine,

But 'twas thy strength which made my nectar thine!

THE SOWER.

See, full of hope, thou trustest to the earth

The golden seed, and waitest till the spring

Summons the buried to a happier birth;

But in Time's furrow duly scattering,

Think'st thou, how deeds by wisdom sown may be,

Silently ripen'd for Eternity?

THE MERCHANT.

Where sails the ship?—It leads the Tyrian forth

For the rich amber of the liberal North.

Be kind ye seas—winds lend your gentlest wing,

May in each creek, sweet wells restoring spring!—

To you, ye gods, belong the Merchant!—o'er

The waves, his sails the wide world's goods explore;

And, all the while, wherever waft the gales,

The wide world's good sails with him as he sails!

COLUMBUS.

Steer on, bold Sailor—Wit may mock thy soul that sees the land,

And hopeless at the helm may drop the weak and weary hand,

YET EVER—EVER TO THE WEST, for there the coast must lie,

And dim it dawns and glimmering dawns before thy reason's eye;

Yea, trust the guiding God—and go along the floating grave,

Though hid till now—yet now, behold the New World o'er the wave!

With Genius Nature ever stands in solemn union still,

And ever what the One foretels the Other shall fulfil.

THE ANTIQUE TO THE NORTHERN WANDERER.

And o'er the river hast thou past, and o'er the mighty sea,

And o'er the Alps, the dizzy bridge hath borne thy steps to me;

To look all near upon the bloom my deathless beauty knows,

And, face to face, to front the pomp whose fame through ages goes—

Gaze on, and touch my relics now! At last thou standest here,

But art thou nearer now to me—or I to thee more near?

THE ANTIQUE AT PARIS.

What the Grecian arts created,

May the victor Gaul, elated,

Bear with banners to his strand.⁴⁵

In museums many a row,

May the conquering showman show

To his startled Fatherland!

Mute to him, they crowd the halls,

Ever on their pedestals

Lifeless stand they!—He alone

Who alone, the Muses seeing,

Clasps—can warm them into being;

The Muses to the Vandal—stone!

THE POETRY OF LIFE.

"Who would himself with shadows entertain,

Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain,

Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true?

Though with my dream my heaven should be resign'd—

Though the free-pinion'd soul that now can dwell

In the large empire of the Possible,

This work-day life with iron chains may bind,

Yet thus the mastery o'er ourselves we find,

And solemn duty to our acts decreed,

Meets us thus tutor'd in the hour of need,

With a more sober and submissive mind!

How front Necessity—yet bid thy youth

Shun the mild rule of life's calm sovereign, Truth."

So speak'st thou, friend, how stronger far than I;

As from Experience—that sure port serene—

Thou look'st; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky,

The summer glory withers from the scene,

Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly,

The godlike images that seem'd so fair!

Silent the playful Muse—the rosy Hours

Halt in their dance; and the May-breathing flowers

Pall from the sister-Graces' waving hair.

Sweet-mouth'd Apollo breaks his golden lyre,

Hermes, the wand with many a marvel rife;—

The veil, rose-woven by the young Desire

With dreams, drops from the hueless cheeks of Life.

The world seems what it is—A Grave! and Love

Casts down the bondage wound his eyes above,

And sees!—He sees but images of clay

Where he dream'd gods; and sighs—and glides away.

The youngness of the Beautiful grows old,

And on thy lips the bride's sweet kiss seems cold;

And in the crowd of joys—upon thy throne

Thou sitt'st in state, and harden'st into stone.

CALEB STUKELY.

PART XII.

THE PARSONAGE.

It was not without misgiving that I knocked modestly at the door of Mr Jehu Tomkins. For himself, there was no solidity in his moral composition, nothing to grapple or rely upon. He was a small weak man of no character at all, and but for his powerful wife and active partner, would have become the smallest of unknown quantities in the respectable parish that contained him. Upon his own weak shoulders he could not have sustained the burden of an establishment, and must inevitably have dwindled into the lightest of light porters, or the most aged of errand-boys. Nothing could have saved him from the operation of a law, as powerful and certain as that of gravitation, in virtue of which the soft and empty-headed of this world walk to the wall, and resign, without a murmur, their places to their betters. As for the deaconess, I have said already that the fact of her being a lady, and the possessor of a heart, constituted the only ground of hope that I could have in reference to her. This I felt to be insecure enough when I held the knocker in my hand, and remembered all at once the many little tales that I had heard, every one of which went far to prove that ladies may be ladies without the generous weakness of their sex,—and carry hearts about with them as easily as they carry bags.

My first application was unsuccessful. The deacon was not at home. "Mr Tomkins and his lady had gone to hear the Reverend Doctor Whitefroth,"—a northern and eccentric light, now blazing for a time in the metropolis. It is a curious fact, and worthy to be recorded, that Mr Tomkins, and Mr Buster, and every non-conformist whom I had hitherto encountered, never professed to visit the house of prayer with any other object than that of hearing. It was never by any accident to worship or to pray. What, in truth was the vast but lowly looking building, into which hundreds crowded with the dapper deacon at their head, sabbath after sabbath—what but a temple sacred to vanity and excitement, eloquence and perspiration! Which one individual, taken at random from the concourse, was not ready to declare that his business there that day was "to hear the dear good man," and nothing else? If you could lay bare—as, thank Heaven, you cannot—your fellow-creature's heart, whither would you behold stealing away the adoration that, in such a place, in such a time, is due to one alone—whither, if not to Mr Clayton? But let this pass.

I paid a second visit to my friend, and gained admittance. It was about half-past eight o'clock in the evening, and the shop had been closed some twenty minutes before. I was ushered into a well-furnished room behind the shop, where sat the firm—Mrs Jehu and the junior partner. The latter looked into his lady's face, perceived a smile upon it, and then—but not till then, he offered me his hand, and welcomed me with much apparent warmth. This ceremony over, Mr Tomkins grew fidgety and uneasy, and betrayed a great anxiety to get up a conversation which he had not heart enough to set a going. Mrs Tomkins, a woman of the world, evinced no anxiety at all, sat smiling, and in peace. I perceived immediately that I must state at once the object of my visit, and I proceeded to the task.

"Sir?" said that lady, and then a postman's knock brought us to a stop, and Jehu skipped across the room to listen at the door.

"That's him, my dear Jemima," exclaimed the linen-draper, "I know his knock," and then he skipped as quickly to his chair again.

The door of the apartment was opened by a servant girl, who entered the room alone and approached her mistress with a card. Mrs Tomkins looked at it through her eye-glass, said "she was most happy," and the servant then retired. The card was placed upon the table near me, and, as I believe, for my inspection. I took it up, and read the following words, "Mr Stanislaus Levisohn." They were engraven in the centre of the paper, and were surrounded by a circle of rays, which in its turn was enveloped in a circle of clouds. In the very corner of the card, and in very small characters, the words "general merchant" were written.

There was a noise of shoe-cleaning outside the door for about five minutes, then the door was opened again by the domestic, and a remarkable gentleman walked very slowly in. He was a tall individual, with small cunning eyes, black eye-brows, and a beard. He was rather shabbily attired, and not washed with care. He had thick boorish hands, and he smelt unpleasantly of tobacco smoke; an affected grin at variance with every feature, was planted on his face, and sickened an unprejudiced observer at the very first gaze. His mode of uttering English betrayed him for a foreigner. He was a native of Poland. Before uttering a syllable, the interesting stranger walked to a corner of the room, turned himself to the wall, and muttered a few undistinguishable words. He then bowed lowly to the company, and took a chair, grinning all the while.

"It vos de coshtom mit de anshent tribes, my tear sare, vor alles tings, to recommend de family to de protection of de hevins. Vy not now mit all goot Christians?"

A glass was poured out. It was but decent to offer me another. I paid my compliments to the hostess and the gentlemen, and was about to drink it off, when the enlightened foreigner called upon me in a loud voice to desist.

"Shtay, mein young friend—ve are not de heathen and de cannibal. It is our privilege to live in de Christian society mit de Christian lady. Ve most ask blessing—alvays—never forget—you excuse—vait tree minutes."

It was not for me to protest against so pious a movement, albeit it presented itself somewhat inopportunely and out of place. Mr Levisohn covered his face with one hand, and murmured a few words. The last only reached me. It was "Amen," and this was rather heaved up in a sigh, than articulately expressed.

Mrs Tomkins supposed that port and sherry were favourite beverages in Poland, but, for her part, she had found that nothing agreed so well with British stomachs as the native wines.

"Ah! my lady," said the Pole, "ve can give up very moch so long ve got British religions."

"Very true, indeed," answered Mrs Tomkins. "Pray, Mr Levisohn, what may be your opinion of the lost sheep? Do you think they will come into the fold during our time?"

Before the gentleman replies, it may be proper to state on his behalf, that he had never given his questioner any reason to suppose that he was better informed on such mysterious subjects than herself. The history of his introduction into the family of the linen-draper is very short. He had been for some years connected with Mr Tomkins in the way of business, having supplied that gentleman with all the genuine foreign, but certainly English, perfumery, that was retailed with considerable profit in his over-nice and pious establishment. Mrs Tomkins, no less zealous in the cause of the church than that of her own shop, at length, and all on a sudden, resolved to set about his conversion, and to present him to the chapel as a brand plucked with her own hand from the burning. As a preliminary step, he was invited to supper, and treated with peculiar respect. The matter was gently touched upon, but discussion postponed until another occasion. Mr Levisohn being very shrewd, very needy, and enjoying no particular principles of morality and religion, perceived immediately the object of his hostess, met her more than half-way in her Christian purposes, and accepted her numerous invitations to tea and supper with the most affectionate readiness. Within two months he was received into the bosom of the church, and became as celebrated for the depth and intensity of his belief as for the earnestness and promptitude with which he attended the meetings of the brethren, particularly those in which eating and drinking did not constitute the least important part of the proceedings. Being a foreigner, he was listened to with the deepest attention, very often indeed to his serious annoyance, for his ignorance was awful, and his assurance, great as it was, not always sufficient to get him clear of his difficulties. His foreign accent, however, worked wonders for him, and whenever too hard pressed, afforded him a secure and happy retreat. An unmeaning grin, and "me not pronounce," had saved him from precipices, down which an Englishman, cæteris paribus, must unquestionably have been dashed.

"Vill dey come?" said Mr Levisohn, in answer to the question. "Yase, certainly, if dey like, I tink."

"I hope Hevin, my dear lady, vill forgive me for dat, and all my wickedness. I am a shinner, I shtink!"

I looked at the converted gentleman, at the same moment that Mrs Jehu assured him that it would be a great thing if they were all as satisfied of their condition as he might be. "Your strong convictions of your worthlessness is alone a proof," she added, "of your accepted state."

"My lady," continued the humble Stanislaus, "I am rotten, I am a tief, a blackguard, a swindler, a pickpocket, a housebreak, a sticker mit de knife. I vish somebody would call me names all de day long, because I forget sometime dat I am de nashty vurm of de creation. I tink I hire a boy to call me names, and make me not forget. Oh, my lady, I alvays remember those fine words you sing—

'If I could read my title clear

To manshions in de shkies,

I say farevell to every fear,

And vipe my veeping eyes.'"

"That is so conscientious of you. Pray, my dear sir, is there an Establishment in Poland? or have you Independent churches?"

"Noting at all, my lady. Do not ask me again, I pray you. It is frightful to a goot Christian to talk dese tings."

"Do you mean de doctrine?" enquired Stanislaus, slowly, as though he found some difficulty in answering the question.

"I tink," said the gentleman, after some delay, "it vould he very goot if were not for someting."

"Den dere is noting more to be said about dat," continued Stanislaus, interrupting her; "and I hope you vill not ask dese deep questions, my dear lady, vich are not at all proper to be answered, and vich put me into de low spirits. Shall ve sing a hymn?"

"By all means," exclaimed the hostess, who immediately made preparations for the ceremony. Hymn-books were introduced, and the servant-maid ordered up, and then a quartet was performed by Mr Levisohn, Mrs Tomkins, her husband, and Betsy. The subject of the song was the courtship of Isaac. Two verses only have remained in my memory, and the manner in which they were given out by the fervent Stanislaus will never be forgotten. They ran thus:—

"Ven Abraham's servant to procure

A vife for Isaac vent,

He met Rebekah, tould his vish,

Her parents gave conshent.

'Shtay,' Satan, my old master, cries,

'Or force shall thee detain.'

'Hinder me not, I vill be gone,

I vish to break my chain.'"

This being concluded, Mr Tomkins asked Mr Levisohn what he had to say in the business line, to which Mr Levisohn replied, "Someting very goot, but should he not vait until after soppare?" whereupon Mr Tomkins gave his lady a significant leer, and the latter retired, evidently to prepare the much desired repast. Then did little Jehu turn confidentially to Stanislaus, and ask him when he meant to deliver that ere conac that he had promised him so long ago.

"Ven Providence, my tear dikkon, paremits—I expect a case of goots at de cushtom-house every day; but my friend vot examins de marchandis, and vot saves me de duties ven I makes it all right mit him, is vary ill, I am sorry for to say, and ve most vait, mit Christian patience, my dear sare, till he get well. You see dat?"

"Oh, yes; that's clear enough. Well, Stanny, I only hope that fellow won't die. I don't think you'd find it so easy to make it all right with any other chap; that's all!"

"I hope he vill not die. Ve mosht pray dat he live, my dear dikkon. I tink it vill be vell if der goot Mr Clayton pray mit der church for him. You shall speak for him."

"Well, what have you done about the Eau de Cologne?" continued Jehu Tomkins. "Have you nailed the fellow?"

"It vos specially about dis matter dat I vish to see you, my dear sare. I persvade der man to sell ten cases. He be very nearly vot you call in der mess. He valk into de Gazette next week. He shtarve now. I pity him. De ten cases cost him ten pounds. I give fifty shilling—two pound ten. He buy meat for de childs, and is tankful. I take ten shillings for my trouble. Der Christian satisfied mit vary little."

"After soppare, my dear sare," answered Stanislaus, who looked at me, and winked again significantly at Jehu.

Mrs Tomkins returned, accompanied by the vocal Betsy. The cloth was spread, and real silver forks, and fine cut tumblers, and blue plates with scripture patterns, speedily appeared. Then came a dish of fried sausages and parsley—then baked potatoes—then lamb chops. Then we all sat round the table, and then, against all order and propriety, Mrs Jehu grossly and publicly insulted her husband at his own board, by calling upon the enlightened foreigner to ask a blessing upon the meal.

"I tank you, my tear goot Mrs Tomkins for dat shop mit der brown, ven it comes to my turn to be sarved. It look just der ting."

"I beg your pardon, Christian lady, have you got, perhaps, der littel pickel-chesnut and der crimson cabbage?"

"Mr Tomkins, go down-stairs and get the pickles," said the mistress of the house, and Tomkins vanished like a mouse on tiptoe.

Before he could return, Stanislaus had eaten more than half his chop, and discovered that, after all, "it was not just the ting." Mrs Jehu entreated him to try another. He declined at first; but at length suffered himself to be persuaded. Four chops had graced the dish originally; the remaining two were divided equally between the lady and myself. I begged that my share might be left for the worthy host, but receiving a recommendation from his wife "not to mind him," I said no more, but kept Mr Stanislaus Levisohn in countenance.

"Noting, my tear friend, I tought der young gentleman vos a poor unconverted sinner dat I met a long time ago. Dat is all. Ve talk of someting else."

Has the reader forgotten the dark-visaged individual, who at the examination of my lamented father before the Commissioners of Bankruptcy made his appearance in company with Mr Levy and the ready Ikey? Him I mean of the vivid imagination, who swore to facts which were no facts at all, and whom an unpoetic jury sentenced to vile imprisonment for wilful perjury? There he sat, transformed into a Pole, bearded and whiskered, and the hair of his head close clipped, but in every other regard the same as when the constable invited him to forsake a too prosaic and ungrateful world: and had Mr Levisohn been wise and guarded, the discovery would never have been made by me; for we had met but once before, then only for a short half hour, and under agitating circumstances. But my curiosity and attention once roused by his exclamation, it was impossible to mistake my man. I fixed my eye upon him, and the harder he pulled at his chop, and the more he attempted to evade my gaze, the more satisfied was I that a villain and an impostor was seated amongst us. Thinking, absurdly enough, to do my host and hostess a lasting service, I determined without delay to unmask the pretended saint, and to secure his victims from the designs he purposed.

"Mr Levisohn," I said immediately, "you have told the truth—we have met before."

"Mrs Tomkins," I continued, rising, "I should not be worthy of your hospitality if I did not at once make known to you the character of that man. He is a convicted criminal. I have myself known him to be guilty of the grossest practices." Mr Levisohn dropped his chop, turned his greasy face up, and then looked round the room, and endeavoured to appear unconcerned, innocent, and amazed all at once. At this moment Jehu entered the room with the pickles, and the face of the deaconess grew fearfully stern.

"I have never been out of London, my good sare. You labour under de mistake.—I excuse you. Ah!" he cried our suddenly, as if a new idea had struck him very hard; "I see now vot it is. I explain. You take me for somebody else."

"I do not, sir. I accuse you publicly of having committed perjury of the most shameless kind, and I can prove you guilty of the charge. Do you know a person of the name of Levy?"

Mr Stanislaus looked to the ceiling after the manner of individuals who desire, or who do not desire, as the case may be, to call a subject to remembrance. "No," he answered, after a long pause; "certainly not. I never hear dat name."

"Beware of him, Mrs Tomkins," I continued, "he is an impostor, a disgrace to mankind, and to the faith which he professes."

"What do you mean by that, you impertinent young man?" said Mrs Tomkins, her blood rising to her face, herself rising from her chair. "I should have thought that a man who had been so recently expelled from his church would have had more decency. A pretty person you must be, to bring a charge of this kind against so good a creature as that."

"Mr Tomkins," continued the lady, "I don't know what object that person has in disturbing the peace of our family, or why he comes here at all to-night. He is a mischief-making, hardened young man, or he would never have come to what he has. Well, I'm sure—What will Satan put into his head next!"

"I vould vish you be not angry. Der young gentleman is, I dare say, vary goot at heart. He is labouring under de deloosions."

"Mr Levisohn, pardon me, I am not. Proofs exist, and I can bring them to convict you."

"Do you hear that, Mr Tomkins. Were you ever insulted so before? Are you master in your own house?"

"Oh, my dear goot Christian friends," said Mr Levisohn, imploringly; "de booels of der Christian growls ven he shees dese sights; vot is de goot of to fight? It is shtoopid. Let me be der peacemaker. Der yong man has been drink, perhaps. I forgive him from te bottom of my heart. If ve quarrel ve fight. If ve fight ve lose every ting.

'So Samson, ven his hair vos lost,

Met the Philistines to his cost,

Shook his vain limbs in shad shurprise,

Made feeble fight, and lost his eyes.'"

"Get out of the house, ambassador of Satan! Mr Tomkins, will you tell him instantly to go?"

"Don't talk to me, you bad man. If you don't go this minute I'll spring the rattle and have up the watchmen."

I did not attempt to say another word. I left the room, and hurried from the house. I had hardly shut the street door before it was violently opened again, and the head of Mr Levisohn made itself apparent.

It was not many days after the enacting of this scene, that I entered upon my duties as the instructor of the infant children of my friend. It was useless to renew my application to the deacon, and I abandoned the idea. The youngest of my pupils was the lisping Billy. It was my honour to introduce him at the very porch of knowledge—to place him on the first step of learning's ladder—to make familiar to him the simple letters of his native tongue, in whose mysterious combinations the mighty souls of men appear and speak. The lesson of the alphabet was the first that I gave, and a heavy sadness depressed and humbled me when, as the child repeated wonderingly after me, letter by letter, I could not but feel deeply and acutely the miserable blighting of my youthful promises. How long was it ago—it seemed but yesterday, when the sun used to shine brightly into my own dear bed-room, and awake me with its first gush of light, telling my ready fancy that he came to rouse me from inaction, and to encourage me to my labours. Oh, happy labours! Beloved books! What joy I had amongst you! The house was silent—the city's streets tranquil as the breath of morning. I heard nothing but the glorious deeds ye spoke of, and saw only the worthies that were but dust, when centuries now passed were yet unborn, but whose immortal spirits are vouchsafed still to elevate man, and cheer him onward. How intense and sweet was our communion; and as I read and read on, how gratefully repose crept over me; how difficult it seemed to think unkindly of the world, or to believe in all the tales of human selfishness and cruelty with which the old will ever mock the ear and dull the heart of the confiding and the young. How willing I felt to love, and how gay a place was earth, with her constant sun, and overflowing lap, and her thousand joys, for man! And how intense was the fire of hope that burned within me—fed with new fuel every passing hour, and how abiding and how beautiful the future! THE FUTURE! and it was here—a nothing—a dream—a melancholy phantasm!

There are seasons of adversity, in which the mind, plunged in despondency and gloom, is startled and distressed by pictures of a happier time, that travel far to fool and tantalize the suffering heart. I sat with the child, and gazing full upon him, beheld him not, but—a vision of my father's house. There sits the good old man, and at his side—ah, how seldom were they apart!—my mother. And there, too, is the clergyman, my first instructor. Every well-remembered piece of furniture is there. The chair, sacred to my sire, and venerated by me for its age, and for our long intimacy. I have known it since first I knew myself. The antique bookcase—the solid chest of drawers—the solemn sofa, all substantial as ever, and looking, as at first, the immoveable and natural properties of the domestic parlour. My mother has her eyes upon me, and they are full of tears. My father and the minister are building up my fortunes, are fixing in the sandy basis of futurity an edifice formed of glittering words, incorporeal as the breath that rears it. And the feelings of that hour come back upon me. I glow with animation, confidence, and love. I have the strong delight that beats within the bosom of the boy who has the parents' trusty smile for ever on him. I dream of pouring happiness into those fond hearts—of growing up to be their prop and staff in their decline. I pierce into the future, and behold myself the esteemed and honoured amongst men—the patient, well-rewarded scholar—the cherished and the cherisher of the dear authors of my life—all brightness—all glory—all unsullied joy. The child touches my wet cheek, and asks me why I weep?—why?—why? He knows not of the early wreck that has annihilated the unhappy teacher's peace.

We were still engaged upon our lesson, when John Thompson interrupted the proceeding, by entering the apartment in great haste, and placing in my hands a newspaper. "He had been searching," he said, "for one whole fortnight, to find a situation that would suit me, and now he thought that he had hit upon it. There it was, 'a tutorer in a human family,' to teach the languages and the sciences. Apply from two to four. It's just three now. Send the youngster to his mother, and see after it, my friend. I wouldn't have you lose it for the world." I took the journal from his hands, and, as though placed there by the hand of the avenger to arouse deeper remorse, to draw still hotter blood from the lacerated heart, the following announcement, and nothing else, glared on the paper, and took possession of my sight.

"UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE. After a contest more severe than any known for years, MR JOHN SMITHSON, of Trinity College, Cambridge, has been declared THE SENIOR WRANGLER of his year. Mr Smithson is, we understand, the son of a humble curate in Norfolk, whose principal support has been derived from the exertions of his son during his residence in the University. The honour could not have been conferred on a more deserving child of Alma Mater."

A hundred recollections crowded on my brain. My heart was torn with anguish. The perseverance and the filial piety of Smithson, so opposite to my unsteadiness and unnatural disloyalty, confounded and unmanned me. I burst into tears before the faithful Thompson, and covered my face for very shame.

"What is the matter, lad?" exclaimed the good fellow, pale with surprise, his eye trembling with honest feeling. "Have I hurt you? Drat the paper! Don't think, Stukely, I wished to get rid of you. Don't think so hard of your old friend. I thought to help and do you service; I know you have the feelings of a gentleman about you, and I wouldn't wound 'em, God knows, for any thing. There, think no more about it. I am so rough a hand, I'm not fit to live with Christians. I mean no harm, believe me. Get rid of you, my boy! I only wish you'd say this is your home, and never leave me—that would make me happy."

"Thompson," I answered, through my tears, "I am not deserving of your friendship. You have not offended me. You have never wronged me. You are all kindness and truth. I have had no real enemy but myself. Read that paper."

"I can guess his father's feelings," said my friend. "Earth's a heaven, Stukely, when father and child live together as God appointed them."

"Don't talk about it, lad. I have got eleven of 'em, and that's a side of the picture that I can't look at with pleasure. I think the boys are good. They have gone on well as yet; but who can tell what a few years will do?"

"Or a few months, Thompson," I answered quickly, "or a few days, or hours, when the will is fickle, principles unfixed, and the heart treacherous and false. That Smithson and I, Thompson, were fellow students. We left home together—we took up our abode in the University together—we were attached to the same college—taught by the same master—read from the same books. My feelings were as warm as his. My resolution to do well apparently as firm, my knowledge and attainments as extensive. If he was encouraged, and protected, and urged forward by the fond love of a devoted household—so was I. If parental blessings hallowed his entrance upon those pursuits which have ended so successfully for him—so did they mine. If he had motive for exertion, I had not less—we were equal in the race which we began together—look at us now!"

"He was honest and faithful to his purpose. I was not. He saw one object far in the distance before him, and looked neither to the right nor left, but dug his arduous way towards it. He craved not the false excitement of temporary applause, nor deemed the opinion of weak men essential to his design. He had a sacred duty to perform, which left him not the choice of action, and he performed it to the letter. He had a feeling conscience, and a reasoning heart, and the home of his youth, and the sister who had grown up with him, the father who had laboured, the mother who had striven for him, visited him by night and by day—in his silent study, and in his lonely bed, comforting, animating, and supporting him by their delightful presence."

"Just the reverse of this. I had neither simplicity of aim, nor stability of affection. One slip from the path, and I hadn't energy to take the road again. One vicious inclination, and the virtuous resolves of years melted before it. The sneer of a fool could frighten me from rectitude—the smile of a girl render me indifferent to the pangs that tear a parent's heart. Look at us both. Look at him—the man whom I treated with contemptuous derision. What a return home for him—his mission accomplished—HIS DUTY DONE! Look at me, the outcast, the beggar, the despised—the author of a mother's death, a father's bankruptcy and ruin—with no excuse for misconduct, no promise for the future, no self-justification, and no hope of pardon beyond that afforded to the vilest criminal that comes repentant to the mercy throne of God!"

"Well—but, sir—Stukely—don't take the thing to heart. You are young—look for'rads. Oh, I tell you, it's a blessed thing to be sorry for our faults, and to feel as if we wished to do better for the time to come. I'm an older man than you, and I bid you take comfort, and trust to God for better things, and better things will come, too. You are not so badly off now as you were this time twelvemonth. And you know I'll never leave you. Don't despond—don't give away. It's unnatural for a man to do it, and he's lost if he does. Oh, bless you, this is a life of suffering and sorrow, and well it is; for who wouldn't go mad to think of leaving all his young 'uns behind him, and every thing he loves, if he wasn't taught that there's a quieter place above, where all shall meet agin? You know me, my boy; I can't talk, but I want to comfort you and cheer you up—and so, give me your hand, old fellow, and say you won't think of all this any more, but try and forget it, and see about settling comfortably in life. What do you say to the advertisement? A tutorer in a human family, to teach the languages and the sciences. Come now, that's right; I'm glad to see you laugh. I suppose I don't give the right pronunciation to the words. Well, never mind; laugh at your old friend. He'd rather see you laugh at him than teaze your heart about your troubles."

Thompson would not be satisfied until I had read the advertisement, and given him my opinion of its merits. He would not suffer me to say another word about my past misfortunes, but insisted on my looking forward cheerfully, and like a man. The situation appeared to him just the thing for me; and after all, if I had wrangled as well as that 'ere Smithson—(though, at the same time, wrangling seemed a very aggravating word to put into young men's mouths at all)—perhaps I shouldn't have been half as happy as a quiet comfortable life would make me. "I was cut out for a tutorer. He was sure of it. So he'd thank me to read the paper without another syllable." The advertisement, in truth, was promising. "The advertiser, in London, desired to engage the services of a young gentleman, capable of teaching the ancient languages, and giving his pupils 'an introduction to the sciences.' The salary would be liberal, and the occupation with a humane family in the country, who would receive the tutor as one of themselves. References would be required and given."

"References would be required and given," I repeated, after having concluded the advertisement, and put the paper down.

"Yes, that's the only thing!" said Thompson, scratching his honest ear, like a man perplexed and driven to a corner. "We haven't got no references to give. But I'll tell you what we've got though. We've got the papers of these freehold premises, and we've something like two thousand in the bank. I'll give 'em them, if you turns out a bad 'un. That I'll undertake to do, and shan't be frightened either. Now, you just go, and see if you can get it. Where do you apply?"

"Then, don't you lose a minute. I shouldn't be surprised if the place is run down already. London's overstocked with tutorers and men of larning. You come along o' me, Billy, and don't you lose sight of this 'ere chance, my boy. If they wants a reference, tell 'em I'll be glad to wait upon 'em."

Three days had not elapsed after this conversation, before my services were accepted by X.Y.Z.—and I had engaged to travel into Devonshire to enter at once upon my duties, as teacher in the dwelling-house of the Reverend Walter Fairman. X.Y.Z. was a man of business; and, fortunately for me, had known my father well. He was satisfied with my connexion, and with the unbounded recommendation which Thompson gave with me. Mr Fairman was incumbent of one of the loveliest parishes in England, and the guardian and teacher of six boys. My salary was fifty pounds per annum, with board and lodging. The matter was settled in a few hours, and before I had time to consider, my place was taken in the coach, and a letter was dispatched to Mr Fairman, announcing my intended departure. Nothing could exceed the joy of Thompson at my success—nothing could be kinder and more anxious than his valuable advice.

"Now," he said as we walked together from the coach-office, "was I wrong in telling you that better things would turn up? Take care of yourself, and the best wrangler of the lot may be glad to change places with you. It isn't lots of larning, or lots of money, or lots of houses and coaches, that makes a man happy in this world. They never can do it; but they can do just the contrarery, and make him the miserablest wretch as crawls. A contented mind is 'the one thing needful.' Take what God gives gratefully, and do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. That's a maxim that my poor father was always giving me, and, I wish, when I take the young 'uns to church, that they could always hear it, for human natur needs it."

The evening before my setting out was spent with Thompson's family. I had received a special invitation, and Thompson, with the labouring sons, were under an engagement to the mistress of the house, to leave the workshop at least an hour earlier than usual. Oh, it was a sight to move the heart of one more hardened than I can boast to be, to behold the affectionate party assembled to bid me farewell, and to do honour to our leave-taking. A little feast was prepared for the occasion, and my many friends were dressed, all in their Sunday clothes, befittingly. There was not one who had not something to give me for a token. Mary had worked me a purse; and Mary blushed whilst her mother betrayed her, and gave the little keepsake. Ellen thought a pincushion might be useful; and the knitter of the large establishment provided me with comforters. All the little fellows, down to Billy himself, had a separate gift, which each must offer with a kiss, and with a word or two expressive of his good wishes. All hoped I would come soon again, and Aleck more than hinted a request that I would postpone my departure to some indefinite period which he could not name. Poor tremulous heart! how it throbbed amongst them all, and how sad it felt to part from them! Love bound me to the happy room—the only love that connected the poor outcast with the wide cold world. This was the home of my affections—could I leave it—could I venture once more upon the boisterous waters of life without regret and apprehension?

Thompson kindly offered to accompany me on the following morning to the inn from which I was destined to depart, but I would not hear of it. He was full of business; had little time to spare, and none to throw away upon me. I begged him not to think of it, and he acquiesced in my wishes. We were sitting together, and his wife and children had an hour or two previously retired to rest.

"Them's good children, ain't they, Stukely?" enquired Thompson, after having made a long pause.

"It looked nice of 'em to make you a little present of something before you went. But it was quite right. That's just as it should be. I like that sort of thing, especially when a man understands the sperrit that a thing's given with. Now, some fellows would have been offended if any thing had been offered 'em. How I do hate all that!"

"I assure you, Thompson, I feel deeply their kind treatment of their friend. I shall never forget it."

"Well, now, I am so happy to hear it, you can't think," continued Thompson, fumbling about his breeches pocket, and drawing from it at length something which he concealed in his fist. "There, take that," he suddenly exclaimed; "take it, my old fellow, and God bless you. It's no good trying to make a fuss about it."

"No, Thompson," I replied, "I cannot accept it. Do not think me proud or ungrateful; but I have no right to take it."

"It's only twenty guineas, man, and I can afford it. Now look, Stukely, you are going to leave me. If you don't take it, you'll make me as wretched as the day is long. You are my friend, and my friend mustn't go amongst strangers without an independent spirit. If you have twenty guineas in your pocket, you needn't be worrying yourself about little things. You'll find plenty of ways to make the money useful. You shall pay me, if you like, when you grow rich, and we meets again; but take it now, and make John Thompson happy."

In the lap of nature the troubled mind gets rest; and the wounds of the heart heal rapidly, once delivered there, safe from contact with the infectious world; and the bosom of the nursing mother is not more powerful or quick to lull the pain and still the sobs of her distressed ones. It is the sanctuary of the bruised spirit, and to arrive at it is to secure shelter and to find repose. Peace, eternal and blessed, birthright and joy of angels, whither do those glimpses hover that we catch of thee in this tumultuous life, weak, faint, and transient though they be, melting the human soul with heavenly tranquillity? Whither, if not upon the everlasting hills, where the brown line divides the sky, or on the gentle sea, where sea and sky are one—a liquid cupola—or in the leafy woods and secret vales, where beauty lends her thrilling voice to silence? How often will the remembrance only of one bright spot—a vision of Paradise rising over the dull waste of my existence—send a glow of comfort to my aged heart, and a fresh feeling of repose which the harsh business of life cannot extinguish or disturb! And what a fair history comes with that shadowy recollection! How much of passionate condensed existence is involved in it, and how mysteriously, yet naturally connected with it, seem all the noblest feelings of my imperfect nature! The scene of beauty has become "a joy for ever."

I recall a spring day—a sparkling day of the season of youth and promise—and a nook of earth, fit for the wild unshackled sun to skip along and brighten with his inconstant giddy light. Hope is everywhere; murmuring in the brooks, and smiling in the sky. Upon the bursting trees she sits; she nestles in the hedges. She fills the throat of mating birds, and bears the soaring lark nearer and nearer to the gate of Heaven. It is the first holiday of the year, and the universal heart is glad. Grief and apprehension cannot dwell in the human breast on such a day; and, for an hour, even Self is merged in the general joy. I reach my destination; and the regrets for the past, and the fear for the future, which have accompanied me through the long and anxious journey, fall from the oppressed spirit, and leave it buoyant, cheerful, free—free to delight itself in a land of enchantment, and to revel again in the unsubstantial glories of a youthful dream. I paint the Future in the colours that surround me, and I confide in her again.

It was noon when we reached the headquarters of the straggling parish of Deerhurst—its chief village. We had travelled since the golden sunrise over noble earth, and amongst scenes scarcely less heavenly than the blue vault which smiled upon them. Now the horizon was bounded by a range of lofty hills linked to each other by gentle undulations, and bearing to their summits innumerable and giant trees; these, crowded together, and swayed by the brisk wind, presented to the eye the figure of a vast and supernatural sea, and made the intervening vale of loveliness a neglected blank. Then we emerged suddenly—yes, instantaneously—as though designing nature, with purpose to surprize, had hid behind the jutting crag, beneath the rugged steep—upon a world of beauty; garden upon garden, sward upon sward, hamlet upon hamlet, far as the sight could reach, and purple shades of all beyond. Then, flashes of the broad ocean, like quick transitory bursts of light, started at intervals, washing the feet of a tall emerald cliff, or, like a lake, buried between the hills. Shorter and shorter become the intermissions, larger and larger grows the watery expanse, until, at length, the mighty element rolls unobstructed on, and earth, decked in her verdant leaves, her flowers and gems, is on the shore to greet her.

The entrance to the village is by a swift, precipitous descent. On either side are piled rude stones, placed there by a subtle hand, and with a poet's aim, to touch the fancy, and to soothe the traveller with thoughts of other times—of ruined castles, and of old terrace walks. Already have the stones fulfilled their purpose, and the ivy, the brier, and the saxifrage have found a home amongst them. At the foot of the declivity, standing like a watchful mother, is the church—the small, the unpretending, the venerable and lovely village church. You do not see a house till she is passed. Before a house was built about her, she was an aged church, and her favoured graves were rich in heavenly clay. The churchyard gate; and then at once, the limited and quiet village, nestling in a valley and shut out from the world: beautiful and self-sufficient. Hill upon hill behind, each greener than the last—hill upon hill before, all exclusion, and nothing but her own surpassing loveliness to console and cheer her solitude. And is it not enough? What if she know little of the sea beyond its voice, and nothing of external life—her crystal stream, her myrtle-covered cottages, her garden plots, her variegated flowers and massive foliage, her shady dells and scented lanes are joys enough for her small commonwealth. Thin curling smoke that rises like a spirit from the hidden bosom of one green hillock, proclaims the single house that has its seat upon the eminence. It is the parsonage—my future home.

With a trembling heart I left the little inn, and took my silent way to the incumbent's house. There was no eye to follow me, the leafy street was tenantless, and seemed made over to the restless sun and dissolute winds to wanton through it as they pleased. As I ascended, the view enlarged—beauty became more beauteous, silence more profound. I reached the parsonage gate, and my heart yearned to tell how much I longed to live and die on this sequestered and most peaceful spot. The dwelling-house was primitive and low; its long and overhanging roof was thatched; its windows small and many. A myrtle, luxuriant as a vine, covered its entire front, and concealed the ancient brick and wood. A raised bank surrounded the green nest, and a gentle slope conducted to a lawn fringed with the earliest flowers of the year. I rang the loud bell, and a neatly dressed servant-girl gave me admittance to the house. In a room of moderate size, furnished by a hand as old at least as the grandsires of the present occupants, and well supplied with books, sat the incumbent. He was a man of fifty years of age or more, tall and gentlemanly in demeanour. His head was partly bald, and what remained of his hair was grey almost to whiteness. He had a noble forehead, a marked brow, and a cold grey eye. His mouth betrayed sorrow, or habitual deep reflection, and the expression of every other feature tended to seriousness. The first impression was unfavourable. A youth, who was reading with the minister when I entered the apartment, was dismissed with a simple inclination of the head, and the Rev. Walter Fairman then pointed to a seat.

"You have had a tedious journey, Mr Stukely," began the incumbent, "and you are fatigued, no doubt."

"Yes, it is pretty," answered Mr Fairman, very coldly as I thought. "Are you hungry, Mr Stukely? We dine early; but pray take refreshment if you need it."

"I have a parcel in my trunk, sir, which will be here immediately. What magnificent trees!" I exclaimed again, my eyes riveted upon a stately cluster, which were about a hundred yards distant.

"Have you been accustomed to tuition?" asked Mr Fairman, taking no notice of my remark.

"I have not, sir, but I am sure that I shall be delighted with the occupation. I have always thought so."

"We must not be too sanguine. Nothing requires more delicate handling than the mind of youth. In no business is experience, great discernment and tact, so much needed as in that of instruction."

"Well, well," said the incumbent, "I have no doubt we shall do. You are a Cambridge man, Mr Graham writes me?"

"I was only a year, sir, at the university. Circumstances prevented a longer residence. I believe I mentioned the fact to Mr Graham."

"Oh yes, he told me so. You shall see the boys this afternoon. They are fine-hearted lads, and much may be done with them. There are six. Two of them are pretty well advanced. They read Euripides and Horace. Is Euripides a favourite of yours?"

"He is tender, plaintive, and passionate," I answered; "but perhaps I may be pardoned if I venture to prefer the vigour and majesty of the sterner tragedian."

"You mean you like Æschylus better. Do you write poetry, Mr Stukely? Not Latin verses, but English poetry."

"Well, I am glad of that. It struck me that you did. Will you really take no refreshment? Are you not fatigued?"

"Not in the least, sir. This lovely prospect, for one who has seen so little of nature as I have, is refreshment enough for the present."

"Ah," said Mr Fairman, sighing faintly, "you will get accustomed to it. There is something in the prospect, but more in your own mind. Some of our poor fellows would be easily served and satisfied, if we could feed them on the prospect. But if you are not tired you shall see more of it if you will. I have to go down to the village. We have an hour till dinner-time. Will you accompany me?"

"She has been in the village since breakfast, sir. Mrs Barnes sent word that she was ill, and Miss took her the rice and sago that Dr Mayhew ordered."

"Foolish fellow. I'll call on him. Mary, if Cuthbert the fisherman comes, give him that bottle of port wine; but tell him not to touch a drop of it himself. It is for his sick child, and it is committing robbery to take it. Let him have the blanket also that was looked out for him."

I have said already that the first opinion which I formed of the disposition of Mr Fairman was not a flattering one. Before he spoke a word, I felt disappointed and depressed. My impression after our short conversation was worse than the first. The natural effect of the scene in which I suddenly found myself, had been to prepare my ever too forward spirit for a man of enthusiasm and poetic temperament. Mr Fairman was many degrees removed from warmth. He spoke to me in a sharp tone of voice, and sometimes, I suspected, with the intention of mocking me. His manner, when he addressed the servant-girl, was not more pleasing. When I followed him from the room, I regretted the haste with which I had accepted my appointment; but a moment afterwards I entered into fairyland again, and the passing shadow left me grateful to Providence for so much real enjoyment. We descended the hill, and for a time, in silence, Mr Fairman was evidently engaged in deep thought, and I had no wish to disturb him. Every now and then we lighted upon a view of especial beauty, and I was on the point of expressing my unbounded admiration, when one look at my cool and matter-of-fact companion at once annoyed and stopped me.

"Yes," said Mr Fairman at length, still musing. "It is very difficult—very difficult to manage the poor. I wonder if they are grateful at heart. What do you think, Mr Stukely?"

"It is the scenery, I suppose. That will make you praise every thing for the next day or so. It will not do, though. We must walk on our feet, and be prosaic in this world. The poor are not as poets paint them, nor is there so much happiness in a hovel as they would lead you to expect. The poets are like you—they have nothing to say but praise. Ah, me! they draw largely on their imaginations."

"I do not, sir, in this instance," I answered, somewhat nettled. "My most valued friends are in the humblest ranks of life. I am proud to say so. I am not prepared to add, that the most generous of men are the most needy, although it has been my lot to meet with sympathy and succour at the hands of those who were much in want of both themselves."

"I believe you, Mr Stukely," answered the incumbent in a more feeling tone. "I am not fond of theories; yet that's a theory with which I would willingly pass through life; but it will not answer. It is knocked on the head every hour of the day. Perhaps it is our own fault. We do not know how to reach the hearts, and educate the feelings of the ignorant and helpless. Just step in here."

We were standing before a hut at the base of the hill. It was a low dirty-looking place, all roof, with a neglected garden surrounding it. One window was in the cob-wall. It had been fixed there originally, doubtless with the object of affording light to the inmates; but light, not being essential to the comfort or happiness of the present tenants, was in a great measure excluded by a number of small rags which occupied the place of the diamond panes that had departed many months before. A child, ill-clad, in fragments of clothes, with long and dirty hair, unclean face, and naked feet, cried at the door, and loud talking was heard within. Mr Fairman knocked with his knuckle before he entered, and a gruff voice desired him to "come in." A stout fellow, with a surly countenance and unshaven beard, was sitting over an apology for a fire, and a female of the same age and condition was near him. She bore an unhappy infant in her arms, whose melancholy peakish face, not twelve-months old, looked already conscious of prevailing misery. There was no flooring to the room, which contained no one perfect or complete article of furniture, but symptoms of many, from the blanketless bed down to the solitary coverless saucepan. Need I add, that the man who sat there, the degraded father of the house, had his measure of liquor before him, and that the means of purchasing it were never wanting, however impudently charity might be called upon to supply the starving family with bread?

The man did not rise upon our entrance. He changed colour very slightly, and looked more ignorantly surly, or tried to do so.

"Well, Jacob Warden," said the incumbent, "you are determined to brave it out, I see." The fellow did not answer.

"When I told you yesterday that your idleness and bad habits were bringing you to ruin, you answered—I was a liar. I then said, that when you were sorry for having uttered that expression, you might come to the parsonage and tell me so. You have not been yet—I am grieved to say it. What have I ever done to you, Jacob Warden, that you should behave so wickedly? I do not wish you to humble yourself to me, but I should have been glad to see you do your duty. If I did mine, perhaps, I should give you up, and see you no more, for I fear you are a hardened man."

"He hasn't had no work for a month," said the wife, in a tone of upbraiding, as if the minister had been the wilful cause of it.

"And whose fault is that, Mrs Warden? There is work enough for sober and honest men in the parish. Why was your husband turned away from the Squire's?"

"Why, all along of them spoons. They never could prove it agin him, that's one thing—though they tried it hard enough."

"Come, come, Mrs Warden, if you love that man, take the right way to show it. Think of your children."

"Yes; if I didn't—who would, I should like to know? The poor are trodden under foot."

"Not so, Mrs Warden, the poor are taken care of, if they are deserving. God loves the poor, and commands us all to love them. Give me your Bible?" The woman hesitated a minute, and then answered—

"We have'nt got it. What's the use of keeping a Bible in the house for children as can't read, when they are crying for summat to eat?"

"Well, I don't know. The servant always looks grumpy at us when we come a-begging, and seems to begrudge us every mouthful. It's all very well to live on other persons' leavings. I dare say you don't give us what you could eat yourselves."

"We give the best we can afford, Mrs Warden, and, God knows, with no such feeling as you suppose. How is the child? Is it better?"

"Call! Yes, but he made me tramp to his house for the physic, and when he passed the cottage the other day, I called after him; but devil a bit would he come back. We might have died first, of course: he knows, he isn't paid, and what does he care?"

"It is very wrong of you to talk so. You are well aware that he was hurrying to a case of urgency, and could not be detained. He visited you upon the following day, and told you so."

"Woman" exclaimed Mr Fairman, solemnly, "my heart bleeds for those poor children. What will become of them with such an example before their eyes? I can say no more to you than I have repeated a hundred times before. I would make you happy in this world if I could; I would save you. You forbid me. I would be your true friend, and you look upon me as an enemy. Heaven, I trust, will melt your heart! What is that child screaming for?"

Mr Fairman took some biscuits from his pockets, and placed them on the table. "Let the girl come in, and eat," said he. "I shall send you some meat from the village. Warden, I cannot tell you how deeply I feel your wickedness. I did expect you to come to the parsonage and say you were sorry. It would have looked well, and I should have liked it. You put it out of my power to help you. It is most distressing to see you both going headlong to destruction. May you live to repent! I shall see you again this evening, and I will speak to you alone. Come, Mr Stukely, our time is getting short."

The incumbent spoke rapidly, and seemed affected. I looked at him, and could hardly believe him to be the cold and unimpassioned man that I had at first imagined him.

"There, sir," said the minister in a quick tone of voice, "what is the beautiful prospect, and what are the noble trees, to the heart of that man? What have they to do at all with man's morality? Had those people never seen a shrub or flower, could they have been more impenetrable, more insolent and suspicious, or steeped in vice much deeper? That man wants only opportunity, a large sphere of action, and the variety of crime and motive that are to be found amongst congregated masses of mankind, to become a monster. His passions and his vices are as wilful and as strong as those of any man born and bred in the sinks of a great city. They have fewer outlets, less capability of mischief—and there is the difference."

I ventured no remark, and the incumbent, after a short pause, continued in a milder strain.

"I may be, after all, weak and inefficient. Doubtless great delicacy and caution are required. Heavenly truths are not to be administered to these as to the refined and willing. The land must be ploughed, or it is useless to sow the seed. Am I not perhaps, an unskilful labourer?"

Mr Fairman stopped at the first house in the village—the prettiest of the half dozen myrtle-covered cottages before alluded to. Here he tapped softly, and a gentle foot that seemed to know the visitor hastened to admit him.

"Well, Mary," said the minister, glancing round the room—a clean and happy-looking room it was—"where's Michael?"

"He is gone, sir, as you bade him, to make it up with Cousin Willett. He couldn't rest easy, sir, since you told him that it was no use coming to church so long as he bore malice. He won't be long, sir."

Mr Fairman smiled; and cold as his grey eye might be, it did not seem so steady now.

"Mary, that is good of him; tell him his minister is pleased. How is work with him?"

"Then at the month's end, Mary, let him come to the parsonage. I have something for him there. But we can wait till then. Have you seen the itinerary preacher since?"

"Do neither you nor Michael speak with him, nor listen to his public preachings. I mean, regard him not as one having authority. I speak solemnly, and with a view to your eternal peace. Do not forget."

Every house was visited, and in all, opportunity was found for the exercise of the benevolent feelings by which the incumbent was manifestly actuated. He lost no occasion of affording his flock sound instruction and good advice. It could not be doubted for an instant that their real welfare, temporal and everlasting, lay deeply in his heart. I was struck by one distinguishing feature in his mode of dealing with his people; it was so opposed to the doctrine and practice of Mr Clayton, and of those who were connected with him. With the latter, a certain degree of physical fervour, and a conventional peculiarity of expression, were insisted upon and accepted as evidences of grace and renewed life. With Mr Fairman, neither acquired heat, nor the more easily acquired jargon of a clique, were taken into account. He rather repressed than encouraged their existence; but he was desirous, and even eager, to establish rectitude of conduct and purity of feeling in the disciples around him: these were to him tangible witnesses of the operation of that celestial Spirit before whose light the mists of simulation and deceit fade unresistingly away. I could not help remarking, however, that in every cottage the same injunction was given in respect of the itinerant; the same solemnity of manner accompanied the command; the same importance was attached to its obedience. There seemed to me, fresh from the hands of Mr Clayton, something of bigotry and uncharitableness in all this. I did not hint at this effect upon my own mind, nor did I inquire into the motives of the minister. I was not pleased; but I said nothing. As if Mr Fairman read my very thoughts, he addressed me on the subject almost before the door of the last cottage was closed upon us.

"Bigoted and narrow-minded, are the terms, Mr Stukely, by which the extremely liberal would characterize the line of conduct which I am compelled by duty to pursue. I cannot be frightened by harsh terms. I am the pastor of these people, and must decide and act for them. I am their shepherd, and must be faithful. Poor and ignorant, and unripe in judgment, and easily deceived by the shows and counterfeits of truth as the ignorant are, is it for me to hand them over to perplexity and risk? They are simple believers, and are contented. They worship God, and are at peace. They know their lot, and do not murmur at it. Is it right that they should be disturbed with the religious differences and theological subtleties which have already divided into innumerable sects the universal family of Christians whom God made one? Is it fair or merciful to whisper into their ears the plausible reasons of dissatisfaction, envy, and complaining, to which the uninformed of all classes but too eagerly listen? I have ever found the religious and the political propagandist united in the same individual. The man who proposes to the simple to improve his creed, is ready to point out the way to better his condition. He succeeds in rendering him unhappy in both, and there he leaves him. So would this man, and I would rather die for my people, than tamely give them over to their misery."

A tall, stout, weather-beaten man, in the coarse dress of a fisherman, descending the hill, intercepted our way. It was the man Cuthbert, already mentioned by Mr Fairman. He touched his southwester to the incumbent.

"All but well, sir. Doctor Mayhew don't mean to come again. It's all along of them nourishments that Miss Ellen sent us down. The Doctor says he must have died without them."

"Grateful, sir!" exclaimed the man. "If ever I forget what you have done for that poor child, I hope the breath——" The brawny fisherman could say no more. His eyes filled suddenly with tears, and he held down his head, ashamed of them. He had no cause to be so.

"Be honest and industrious, Cuthbert; give that boy a good example. Teach him to love his God, and his neighbour as himself. That will be gratitude enough, and more than pay Miss Ellen."

We said little till we reached the parsonage again; but before I re-entered its gate the Reverend Walter Fairman had risen in my esteem, and ceased to be considered a cold and unfeeling man.

We dined; the party consisting of the incumbent, the six students, and myself. The daughter, the only daughter and child of Mr Fairman, who was himself a widower, had not returned from the cottage to which she had been called in the morning. It was necessary that a female should be in constant attendance upon the aged invalid; a messenger had been despatched to the neighbouring village for an experienced nurse; and until her arrival Miss Fairman would permit no one but herself to undertake the duties of the sick chamber. It was on this account that we were deprived of the pleasure of her society, for her accustomed seat was at the head of her father's table. I was pleased with the pupils. They were affable and well-bred. They treated the incumbent with marked respect, and behaved towards their new teacher with the generous kindness and freedom of true young gentlemen. The two eldest boys might be fifteen years of age. The remaining four could not have reached their thirteenth year. In the afternoon I had the scholars to myself. The incumbent retired to his library, and left us to pass our first day in removing the restraint that was the natural accompaniment of our different positions, and in securing our intimacy. I talked of the scenery, and found willing listeners. They understood me better than their master, for they were worshippers themselves. They promised to show me lovelier spots than any I had met with yet; sacred corners, known only to themselves, down by the sea, where the arbute and laurustinus grew like trees, and children of the ocean. Then there were villages near, more beautiful even than their own; one that lay in the lap of a large hill, with the sea creeping round, or rolling at its feet like thunder, sometimes. What lanes, too, Miss Fairman knew of! She would take me into places worth the looking at; and oh, what drawings she had made from them! Their sisters had bought drawings, and paid very dearly for them too, that were not half so finely done! They would ask her to show me her portfolio, and she would do it directly, for she was the kindest creature living. It was not the worst trait in the disposition of these boys, that, whatever might be the subject of conversation, or from whatever point we might start in our discourse, they found pleasure in making all things bear towards the honour and renown of their young mistress. The scenery was nothing without Miss Fairman and her sketches. The house was dull without her, and the singing in the church, if she were ill and absent, was as different as could be. There were the sweetest birds that could be, heard warbling in the high trees that lined the narrow roads; but at Miss Fairman's window there was a nightingale that beat them all. The day wore on, and I did not see the general favourite. It was dusk when she reached the parsonage, and then she retired immediately to rest, tired from the labours of the day. The friend of the family, Doctor Mayhew, had accompanied Miss Fairman home; he remained with the incumbent, and I continued with my young companions until their bedtime. They departed, leaving me their books, and then I took a survey of the work that was before me. My duties were to commence on the following day, and our first subject was the tragedy of Hecuba. How very grateful did I feel for the sound instruction which I had received in early life from my revered pains-taking tutor, for the solid groundwork that he had established, and for the rational mode of tuition which he had from the first adopted. From the moment that he undertook to cultivate and inform the youthful intellect, this became itself an active instrument in the attainment of knowledge—not, as is so often the case, the mere idle depositary of encumbering words. It was little that he required to be gained by rote, for he regarded all acquisitions as useless in which the understanding had not the chiefest share. He was pleased to communicate facts, and anxious to discover, from examination, that the principles which they contained had been accurately seen and understood. Then no labour and perseverance on his part were deemed too great for his pupil, and the business of his life became his first pleasure. In the study of Greek, for which at an early age I evinced great aptitude, I learnt the structure of the language and its laws from the keen observations of my master, whose rules were drawn from the classic work before us—rather than from grammars. To this hour I retain the information thus obtained, and at no period of my life have I ever had greater cause for thankfulness, than when, after many months of idleness and neglect, with a view to purchase bread I opened, not without anxiety, my book again, and found that time had not impaired my knowledge, and that light shone brightly on the pages, as it did of old. Towards the close of the evening, I was invited to the study of Mr Fairman. Doctor Mayhew was still with him, and I was introduced to the physician as the teacher newly arrived from London. The doctor was a stout good-humoured gentleman of the middle height, with a cheerful and healthy-looking countenance. He was, in truth, a jovial man, as well as a great snuff-taker. The incumbent offered me a chair, and placed a decanter of wine before me. His own glass of port was untouched, and he looked serious and dejected.

"Well, sir, how does London look?" enquired the doctor, "are the folks as mad as they used to be? What new invention is the rage now? What bubble is going to burst? What lord committed forgery last? Who was the last woman murdered before you started?"

"Well, never mind. There isn't much lost. I am almost ashamed of old England, that's the truth on't. I have given over reading the newspapers, for they are about as full of horrors as Miss What's-her-name's tales of the Infernals. What an age this is! all crime and fanaticism! Everyman and everything is on the rush. Come, Fairman, take your wine."

Mr Fairman sat gazing on the fire, quietly, and took no notice of the request. "People's heads," continued the medical gentleman, "seem turned topsy-turvy. Dear me, how different it was in my time! What men are about, I can't think. The very last newspaper I read had an advertisement that I should as soon have expected to see there when my father was alive, as a ship sailing along this coast keel upwards. You saw it, Fairman. It was just under the Everlasting Life Pill advertisement; and announced that the Reverend Mr Somebody would preach on the Sunday following, at some conventicle, when the public were invited to listen to him—and that the doors would be opened half an hour earlier than usual to prevent squeezing. That's modern religion, and it looks as much like ancient play-acting as two peas. Where will these marching days of improvement bring us to at last?"

"Tell me, Mayhew," said Mr Fairman, "does it not surprise you that a girl of her age should be so easily fatigued?"

"My dear friend, that makes the sixth time of asking. Let us hope that it will be the last. I don't know what you mean by 'so easily' fatigued. The poor girl has been in the village all day, fomenting and poulticing old Mrs Barnes, and if it had been any girl but herself, she would have been tired out long before. Make your mind easy. I have sent the naughty puss to bed, and she'll be as fresh as a rose in the morning."

"She must keep her exertions within proper bounds," continued the incumbent. "I am sure she has not strength enough to carry out her good intentions. I have watched her narrowly, and cannot be mistaken."

"You do wrong, then, Fairman. Anxious watching creates fear, without the shadow of an excuse for it. When we have anything like a bad symptom, it is time to get uneasy."

"Why, I call your worrying yourself into fidgets, and teazing me into an ill temper, a shocking symptom of bad behaviour. If it continue, you must take a doze. Come, my friend, let me prescribe that glass of good old port. It does credit to the cloth."

"Seriously, Mayhew, have you never noticed the short, hacking cough that sometimes troubles her?"

"Yes; I noticed it last January for the space of one week, when there was not a person within ten miles of you who was not either hacking, as you call it, or blowing his nose from morning till night. The dear child had a cold, and so had you, and I, and everybody else."

"Why, you'll be complaining of the bloom on the peach next! That's health, and nothing else, take my word for it."

"I am, perhaps, morbidly apprehensive; but I cannot forget her poor mother. You attended her, Mayhew, and you know how suddenly that came upon us. Poor Ellen! what should I do without her!"

"Fairman, join me in wishing success to our young friend here. Mr Stukely, here's your good health; and success and happiness attend you. You'll find little society here; but it is of the right sort, I can tell you. You must make yourself at home." The minister became more cheerful, and an hour passed in pleasant conversation. At ten o'clock, the horse of Doctor Mayhew was brought to the gate, and the gentleman departed in great good-humour. Almost immediately afterwards, the incumbent himself conducted me to my sleeping apartment, and I was not loth to get my rest. I fell asleep with the beautiful village floating before my weary eyes, and the first day of my residence at the parsonage closed peacefully upon me.

It was at the breakfast table on the succeeding morning that I beheld the daughter of the incumbent, the favourite and companion of my pupils, and mistress of the house—a maiden in her twentieth year. She was simply and artlessly attired, gentle and retiring in demeanour, and femininely sweet rather than beautiful in expression. Her figure was slender, her voice soft and musical; her hair light brown, and worn plain across a forehead white as marble. The eye-brows which arched the small, rich, hazel eyes were delicately drawn, and the slightly aquiline nose might have formed a study for an artist. With the exception, however, of this last-named feature, there was little in the individual lineaments of the face to surprise or rivet the observer. Extreme simplicity, and perfect innocence—these were stamped upon the countenance, and were its charm. It was a strange feeling that possessed me when I first gazed upon her through the chaste atmosphere that dwelt around her. It was degradation deep and unaffected—a sense of shame and undeservedness. I remembered with self-abhorrence the relation that had existed between the unhappy Emma and myself, and the enormity and disgrace of my offence never looked so great as now, and here—in the bright presence of unconscious purity. She reassured and welcomed me with a natural smile, and pursued her occupation with quiet cheerfulness and unconstraint. I did not wonder that her father loved her, and entertained the thought of losing her with fear; for, young and gentle as she was, she evinced wisdom and age in her deep sense of duty, and in the government of her happy home. Method and order waited on her doings, and sweetness and tranquillity—the ease and dignity of a matron elevating and upholding the maiden's native modesty. And did she not love her sire as ardently? Yes, if her virgin soul spoke faithfully in every movement of her guileless face. Yes, if there be truth in tones that strike the heart to thrill it—in thoughts that write their meaning in the watchful eye, in words that issue straight from the fount of love, in acts that do not bear one shade of selfish purpose. It was not a labour of time to learn that the existence of the child, her peace and happiness, were merged in those of the fond parent. He was every thing to her, as she to him. She had no brother—he no wife: these natural channels of affection cut away, the stream was strong and deep that flowed into each other's hearts. My first interview with the young lady was necessarily limited. I would gladly have prolonged it. The morning was passed with my pupils, and my mind stole often from the work before me to dwell upon the face and form of her, whom, as a sister, I could have doated on and cherished. How happy I should have been, I deemed, if I had been so blessed. Useless reflection! and yet pleased was I to dwell upon it, and to welcome its return, as often as it recurred. At dinner we met again. To be admitted into her presence seemed the reward for my morning toil—a privilege rather than a right. What labour was too great for the advantage of such moments?—moments indeed they were, and less—flashes of time, that were not here before they had disappeared. We exchanged but few words. I was still oppressed with the conviction of my own unworthiness, and wondered if she could read in my burning face the history of shame. How she must avoid and despise me, thought I, when she has discovered all, and how bold and wicked it was to darken the light in which she lived with the guilt that was a part of me! Not the less did I experience this when she spoke to me with kindness and unreserve. The feeling grew in strength. I was conscious of deceit and fraud, and could not shake the knowledge off. I was taking mean advantage of her confidence, assuming a character to which I had no claim, and listening to the accents of innocence and virtue with the equanimity of one good and spotless as herself. In the afternoon the young students resumed their work. When it was over, we strolled amongst the hills; and, at the close of a delightful walk, found ourselves in the enchanting village. Here we encountered Miss Fairman and the incumbent, and we returned home in company. In one short hour we reached it. How many hours have passed since that was ravished from the hand of Time, and registered in the tenacious memory! Years have floated by, and silently have dropped into the boundless sea, unheeded, unregretted; and these few minutes—sacred relics—live and linger in the world, in mercy it may be, to lighten up my lonely hearth, or save the whitened head from drooping. The spirit of one golden hour shall hover through a life, and shed glory where he falls. What are the unfruitful, unremembered years that rush along, frightening mortality with their fatal speed—an instant in eternity! What are the moments loaded with passion, intense, and never-dying—years, ages upon earth! Away with the divisions of time, whilst one short breath—the smallest particle or measure of duration, shall outweigh ages. Breathless and silent is the dewy eve. Trailing a host of glittering clouds behind him, the sun stalks down, and leaves the emerald hills in deeper green. The lambs are skipping on the path—the shepherd as loth to lead them home as they to go. The labourer has done his work, and whistles his way back. The minister has much of good and wise to say to his young family. They hear the business of the day; their guardian draws the moral, and bids them think it over. Upon my arm I bear his child, the fairest object of the twilight group. She tells me histories of this charmed spot, and the good old tales that are as old as the gray church beneath us: she smiles, and speaks of joys amongst the hills, ignorant of the tearful eye and throbbing heart beside her, that overflow with new-found bliss, and cannot bear their weight of happiness.

Another day of natural gladness—and then the Sabbath; this not less cheerful and inspiriting than the preceding. The sun shone fair upon the ancient church, and made its venerable gray stones sparkle and look young again. The dark-green ivy that for many a year has clung there, looked no longer sad and sombre, but gay and lively as the newest of the new-born leaves that smiled on every tree. The inhabitants of the secluded village were already a-foot when we proceeded from the parsonage, and men and women from adjacent villages were on the road to join them. The deep-toned bell pealed solemnly, and sanctified the vale; for its sound strikes deeply ever on the broad ear of nature. Willows and yew-trees shelter the graves of the departed villagers, and the living wend their way beneath them, subdued to seriousness, it may be, by the breathless voice that dwells in every well-remembered mound. There is not one who does not carry on his brow the thoughts that best become it now. All are well dressed, all look cleanly and contented. The children are with their parents, their natural and best instructors. Whom should they love so well? To whom is honour due if not to them? The village owns no school to disannul the tie of blood, to warp and weaken the affection that holds them well together.

All was quietness and decorum in the house of prayer. Every earnest eye was fixed, not upon Mr Fairman, but on the book from which the people prayed, in which they found their own good thoughts portrayed, their pious wishes told, their sorrow and repentance in clearest form described. Every humble penitent was on his knees. With one voice, loud and heartfelt, came the responses which spoke the people's acquiescence in all the pastor urged and prayed on their behalf. The worship over, Mr Fairman addressed his congregation, selecting his subject from the lesson of the day, and fitting his words to the capacities of those who listened. Let me particularly note, that whilst the incumbent pointed distinctly to the cross as the only ground of a sinner's hope, he insisted upon good works as the necessary and essential accompaniment of his faith. "Do not tell me, my dear friends," he said, at the conclusion of his address—"do not tell me that you believe, if your daily life is unworthy a believer. I will not trust you. What is your belief, if your heart is busy in contrivances to overreach your neighbour? What is it, if your mind is filled with envy, malice, hatred, and revenge? What if you are given over to disgraceful lusts—to drunkenness and debauchery? What if you are ashamed to speak the truth, and are willing to become a liar? I tell you, and I have warrant for what I say, that your conduct one towards another must be straightforward, honest, generous, kind, and affectionate, or you cannot be in a safe and happy state. You owe it to yourselves to be so; for if you are poor and labouring men, you have an immortal soul within you, and it is your greatest ornament. It is that which gives the meanest of us a dignity that no earthly honours can supply; a dignity that it becomes the first and last of us by every means to cherish and support. Is it not, my friends, degrading, fearful to know that we bear about with us the very image of our God, and that we are acting worse than the very brutes of the field? Do yourselves justice. Be pure—pure in mind and body. Be honest, in word and deed. Be loving to one another. Crush every wish to do evil, or to speak harshly; be brothers, and feel that you are working out the wishes of a benevolent and loving Father, who has created you for love, and smiles upon you when you do his bidding." There was more to this effect, but nothing need be added to explain the scope and tendency of his discourse. His congregation could not mistake his meaning; they could not fail to profit by it, if reason was not proof against the soundest argument. As quietly as, and, if it be possible, more seriously than, they entered the church, did the small band of worshippers, at the close of the service, retire from it. Could it be my fancy, or did the wife in truth cling closer to her husband—the father clasp his little boy more firmly in his hand? Did neighbour nod to neighbour more eagerly as they parted at the churchyard gate—did every look and movement of the many groups bespeak a spirit touched, a mind reproved? I may not say so, for my own heart was melted by the scene, and might mislead my judgment. There was a second service in the afternoon. This concluded, we walked to the sea-beach. In the evening Mr Fairman related a connected history from the Old Testament, whilst the pupils tracked his progress on their maps, and the narrative became a living thing in their remembrances. Serious conversation then succeeded; to this a simple prayer, and the day closed, sweetly and calmly, as a day might close in Paradise.

The events of the following month partook of the character of those already glanced at. The minister was unremitting in his attendance upon his parishioners, and no day passed during which something had not been accomplished for their spiritual improvement or worldly comfort. His loving daughter was a handmaid at his side, ministering with him, and shedding sunshine where she came. The villagers were frugal and industrious; and seemed, for the most part, sensible of their incumbent's untiring efforts. Improvement appeared even in the cottage of the desperate Warden. Mr Fairman obtained employment for him. For a fortnight he had attended to it, and no complaint had reached the parsonage of misbehaviour. His wife had learned to bear her imagined wrongs in silence, and could even submit to a visit from her best friend without insulting him for the condescension. My own days passed smoothly on. My occupation grew every day more pleasing, and the results of my endeavours as gratifying as I could wish them. My pupils were attached to me, and I beheld them improving gradually and securely under their instruction. Mr Fairman, who, for a week together, had witnessed the course of my tuition, and watched it narrowly, was pleased to express his approbation in the warmest terms. Much of the coldness with which I thought he had at first encountered me disappeared, and his manner grew daily more friendly and confiding. His treatment was most generous. He received me into the bosom of his family as a son, and strove to render his fair habitation my genuine and natural home.

Another month passed by, and the colour and tone of my existence had suffered a momentous change. In the acquirement of a fearful joy, I had lost all joy. In rendering every moment of my life blissful and ecstatic, I had robbed myself of all felicity. A few weeks before, and my state of being had realized a serenity that defied all causes of perturbation and disquiet. Now it was a sea of agitation and disorder; and a breath, a nothing had brought the restless waves upon the quiet surface. Through the kindness of Mr Fairman, my evenings had been almost invariably passed in the society of himself and his daughter. The lads were early risers, and retired, on that account, at a very early hour to rest. Upon their dismission, I had been requested to join the company in the drawing-room. This company included sometimes Doctor Mayhew, the neighbouring squire, or a chance visitor, but consisted oftenest only of the incumbent and his daughter. Aware of the friendly motive which suggested the request, I obeyed it with alacrity. On these occasions, Miss Fairman used her pencil, whilst I read aloud; or she would ply her needle, and soothe at intervals her father's ear with strains of music, which he, for many reasons, loved to hear. Once or twice the incumbent had been called away, and his child and I were left together. I had no reason to be silent whilst the good minister was present, yet I found that I could speak more confidently and better when he was absent. We conversed with freedom and unrestraint. I found the maiden's mind well stored—her voice was not more sweet than was her understanding clear and cloudless. Books had been her joy, which, in the season of suffering, had been my consolation. They were a common source of pleasure. She spoke of them with feeling, and I could understand her. I regarded her with deep unfeigned respect; but, the evening over, I took my leave, as I had come—in peace. Miss Fairman left the parsonage to pay a two-days' visit at a house in the vicinity. Until the evening of the first day I was not sensible of her absence. It was then, and at the customary hour of our reunion, that, for the first time, I experienced, with alarm, a sense of loneliness and desertion—that I became tremblingly conscious of the secret growth of an affection that had waited only for the time and circumstance to make its presence and its power known and dreaded. In the daily enjoyment of her society, I had not estimated its influence and value. Once denied it, and I dared not acknowledge to myself how precious it had become, how silently and fatally it had wrought upon my heart. The impropriety and folly of self-indulgence were at once apparent—yes, the vanity and wickedness—and, startled by what looked like guilt, I determined manfully to rise superior to temptation. I took refuge in my books; they lacked their usual interest, were ineffectual in reducing the ruffled mind to order. I rose and paced my room, but I could not escape from agitating thought. I sought the minister in his study, and hoped to bring myself to calm and reason by dwelling seriously on the business of the day—with him, the father of the lady, and my master. He was not there. He had left the parsonage with Doctor Mayhew an hour before. I walked into the open air restless and unhappy, relying on the freshness and repose of night to be subdued and comforted. It was a night to soften anger—to conquer envy—to destroy revenge—beautiful and bright. The hills were bathed in liquid silvery light, and on their heights, and in the vale, on all around, lay passion slumbering. What could I find on such a night, but favour and incitement, support and confirmation, flattery and delusion? Every object ministered to the imagination, and love had given that wings. I trembled as I pursued my road, and fuel found its unobstructed way rapidly to the flame within. Self-absorbed, I wandered on. I did not choose my path. I believed I did not, and I stopped at length—before the house that held her. I gazed upon it with reverence and love. One room was lighted up. Shadows flitted across the curtained window, and my heart throbbed sensibly when, amongst them, I imagined I could trace her form. I was borne down by a conviction of wrong and culpability, but I could not move, or for a moment draw away my look. It was a strange assurance that I felt—but I did feel it, strongly and emphatically—that I should see her palpably before I left the place. I waited for that sight in certain expectation, and it came. A light was carried from the room. Diminished illumination there, and sudden brightness against a previously darkened casement, made this evident. The light ascended—another casement higher than the last was, in its turn, illumined, and it betrayed her figure. She approached the window, and, for an instant—oh how brief!—looked into the heavenly night. My poor heart sickened with delight, and I strained my eyes long after all was blank and dark again.

Daylight, and the employments of day, if they did not remove, weakened the turbulence of the preceding night. The more I found my passion acquiring mastery, with greater vigour I renewed my work, and with more determination I pursued the objects that were most likely to fight and overcome it. I laboured with the youths for a longer period. I undertook to prepare a composition for the following day which I knew must take much thought and many hours in working out. I armed myself at all points—but the evening came and found me once more conscious of a void that left me prostrate. Mr Fairman was again absent from home. I could not rest in it, and I too sallied forth, but this time, to the village. I would not deliberately offer violence to my conscience, and I shrunk from a premeditated visit to the distant house. My own acquaintances in the village were not many, or of long standing, but there were some half dozen, especial favourites of the incumbent's daughter. To one of these I bent my steps, with no other purpose than that of baffling time that hung upon me painfully and heavily at home. For a few minutes I spoke with the aged female of the house on general topics; then a passing observation—in spite of me—escaped my lips in reference to Miss Ellen. The villager took up the theme and expatiated widely. There was no end to what she had to say of good and kind for the dear lady. I could have hugged her for her praise. Prudence bade me forsake the dangerous ground, and so I did, to return again with tenfold curiosity and zest. I asked a hundred questions, each one revealing more interest and ardour than the last, and involving me in deeper peril. It was at length accomplished. My companion hesitated suddenly in a discourse, then stopped, and looked me in the face, smiling cunningly. "I tell you what, sir," she exclaimed at last, and loudly, "you are over head and ears in love, and that's the truth on't."

"Hush, good woman," I replied, blushing to the forehead, and hastening to shut an open door. "Don't speak so loud. You mistake, it is no such thing. I shall be angry if you say so—very angry. What can you mean?"

"Just what I say, sir. Why, do you know how old I am? Seventy-three. I think I ought to tell, and where's the harm of it? Who couldn't love the sweetest lady in the parish—bless her young feeling heart!"

"I tell you—you mistake—you are to blame. I command you not to repeat this to a living soul. If it should come to the incumbent's ears"—

"Trust me for that, sir. I'm no blab. He shan't be wiser for such as me. But do you mean to tell me, sir, with that red face of your'n, you haven't lost your heart—leave alone your trembling? ah, well, I hopes you'll both be happy, anyhow."

I endeavoured to remonstrate, but the old woman only laughed and shook her aged head. I left her, grieved and apprehensive. My secret thoughts had been discovered. How soon might they be carried to the confiding minister and his unsuspecting daughter! What would they think of me! It was a day of anxiety and trouble, that on which Miss Fairman returned to the parsonage. I received my usual invitation; but I was indisposed, and did not go. I resolved to see her only during meals, and when it was impossible to avoid her. I would not seek her presence. Foolish effort! It had been better to pass hours in her sight, for previous separation made union more intense, and the passionate enjoyment of a fleeting instant was hoarded up, and became nourishment for the livelong day.

It was a soft rich afternoon in June, and chance made me the companion of Miss Fairman. We were alone: I had encountered her at a distance of about a mile from the parsonage, on the sea-shore, whither I had walked distressed in spirit, and grateful for the privilege of listening in gloomy quietude to the soothing sounds of nature—medicinal ever. The lady was at my side almost before I was aware of her approach. My heart throbbed whilst she smiled upon me, sweetly as she smiled on all. Her deep hazel eye was moist. Could it be from weeping?

"Do I betray my weakness, then?" she answered. "I am sorry for it; for dear papa tells all the villagers that no wise man weeps—and no wise woman either, I suppose. But I cannot help it. We are but a small family in the village, and it makes me very sad to miss the old faces one after another, and to see old friends dropping and dropping into the silent grave."

As she spoke the church-bell tolled, and she turned pale, and ceased. I offered her my arm, and we walked on.

"A dear good friend—my best and oldest. When poor mamma was dying, she made me over to her care. She was her nurse, and was mine for years. It is very wrong of me to weep for her. She was good and pious, and is blest."

"Oh! I cannot listen to that bell," she said. "I wish papa would do away with it. What a withering sound it has! I heard it first when it was tolling for my dear mother. It fell upon my heart like iron then, and it falls so now."

"I cannot say that I dislike the melancholy chime. Death is sad. Its messenger should not be gay."

"It is the soul that sees and hears. Beauty and music are created quickly if the heart be joyful. So my book says, and it is true. You have had no cause to think that bell a hideous thing."

"I am an orphan, friendless and deserted. God grant, Miss Fairman, you may be spared my fate for years."

"Not friendless or deserted either, Mr Stukely," answered the young lady kindly; "papa does not deserve, I am sure, that you should speak so harshly."

"Pardon me, Miss Fairman. I did not mean to say that. He has been most generous to me—kinder than I deserve. But I have borne much, and still must bear. The fatherless and motherless is in the world alone. He needs no greater punishment."

"You must not talk so. Papa will, I am sure, be a father to you, as he is to all who need one. You do not know him, Mr Stukely. His heart is overflowing with tenderness and charity. You cannot judge him by his manner. He has had his share of sorrow and misfortune; and death has been at his door oftener than once. Friends have been unfaithful and men have been ungrateful; but trial and suffering have not hardened him. You have seen him amongst the poor, but you have not seen him as I have; nor have I beheld him as his Maker has, in the secret workings of his spirit, which is pure and good, believe me. He has received injury like a child, and dealt mercy and love with the liberality of an angel. Trust my father, Mr Stukely."—

The maiden spoke quickly and passionately, and her neck and face crimsoned with animation. I quivered, for her tones communicated fire—but my line of conduct was marked, and it shone clear in spite of the clouds of emotion which strove to envelope and conceal it—as they did too soon.

"I would trust him, Miss Fairman, and I do," I answered with a faltering tongue. "I appreciate his character and I revere him. I could have made my home with him. I prayed that I might do so. Heaven seemed to have directed my steps to this blissful spot, and to have pointed out at length a resting place for my tired feet. I have been most happy here—too happy—I have proved ungrateful, and I know how rashly I have forfeited this and every thing. I cannot live here. This is no home for me. I will go into the world again—cast myself upon it—do any thing. I could be a labourer on the highways, and be contented if I could see that I had done my duty, and behaved with honour. Believe me, Miss Fairman, I have not deliberately indulged—I have struggled, fought, and battled, till my brain has tottered. I am wretched and forlorn—but I will leave you—to-morrow—would that I had never come——." I could say no more. My full heart spoke its agony in tears.

I had sternly determined to permit no one look to give expression to the feeling which consumed me, to obstruct by force the passage of the remotest hint that should struggle to betray me; but as the maiden looked full and timidly upon me, I felt in defiance of me, and against all opposition, the tell-tale passion rising from my soul, and creeping to my eye. It would not be held back. In an instant, with one treacherous glance, all was spoken and revealed.

By that dejected city, Arno runs,

Where Ugolino clasps his famisht sons.

There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes

Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies.

And thence, my little wanderer! when the Spring

Advanced, thee, too, the hours on silent wing

Brought, while anemonies were quivering round,

And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground,

Where stood fair Florence: there thy voice first blest

My ear, and sank like balm into my breast:

For many griefs had wounded it, and more

Thy little hands could lighten were in store.

But why revert to griefs? Thy sculptured brow

Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.

What then the bliss to see again thy face,

And all that Rumour has announced of grace!

I urge, with fevered breast, the four-month day.

O! could I sleep to wake again in May.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

SANDT AND KOTZEBUE.

Sandt.—Generally men of letters in our days, contrary to the practice of antiquity, are little fond of admitting the young and unlearned into their studies or their society.

Kotzebue.—They should rather those than others. The young must cease to be young, and the unlearned may cease to be unlearned. According to the letters you bring with you, sir, there is only youth against you. In the seclusion of a college life, you appear to have studied with much assiduity and advantage, and to have pursued no other courses than the paths of wisdom.

Sandt.—None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the slough. May I ask you another question?

Sandt.—Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek information from you?

Kotzebue.—The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to truth and happiness.

Sandt.—If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from civil and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful persecute, where the rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and spurning our consolation, what valuable truth do they enable us to discover, or what rational happiness to expect? To say that wisdom leads to truth, is only to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such is truth. Nonsense is better than falsehood; and we come to that.

Sandt.—No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to happiness—I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe that the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a truth—whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me a man who has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet, the malversation of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has not been stoned, or hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or reduced to poverty. The chain of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily in its rusty links. Who then, unless for others, would be a darer of wisdom? And yet, how full of it is even the inanimate world? We may gather it out of stones and straws. Much lies within the reach of all: little has been collected by the wisest of the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power! ye carry your own scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that he will punish you, even worse than ye punish yourselves; and still ye lick the dust where the Old Serpent went before you.

Kotzebue.—I am afraid, sir, you have formed to yourself a romantic and strange idea, both of happiness and of wisdom.

Sandt.—I too am afraid it may be so. My idea of happiness is, the power of communicating peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease, comfort, independence, freedom, to all men capable of them.

Sandt.—A higher may descend more securely on a stronger mind. The power of communicating those blessings to the capable, is enough for my aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise its faculties in the divine work of creating the capacity.

Kotzebue.—Childish! childish!—Men have cravings enow already; give them fresh capacities, and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be contented in the sphere wherein it is the will of Providence to place us; and let us render ourselves useful in it to the utmost of our power, without idle aspirations after impracticable good.

Sandt.—O sir! you lead me where I tremble to step; to the haunts of your intellect, to the recesses of your spirit. Alas! alas! how small and how vacant is the central chamber of the lofty pyramid?

Sandt.—To you, and many mightier. Reverting to your own words; could not you yourself have remained in the sphere you were placed in?

Kotzebue.—What sphere? I have written dramas, and novels, and travels. I have been called to the Imperial Court of Russia.

Sandt.—You sought celebrity.—I blame not that. The thick air of multitudes may be good for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of solitudes is for others. Some horses will not run without the clapping of hands; others fly out of the course rather than hear it. But let us come to the point. Imperial courts! What do they know of letters? What letters do they countenance—do they tolerate?

Sandt.—On their business. O ye paviours of the dreary road along which their cannon rolls for conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke of your rammers. When will ye lay them by?

Sandt.—Germans! Germans! Must ye never have a rood on earth ye can call your own, in the vast inheritance of your fathers?

Kotzebue.—Those who strive and labour, gain it; and many have rich possessions.

Kotzebue.—Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost yet, although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow them up. But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force. The promise of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude. The wise know that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that she never can bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both; in the dazzle of arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never more agitated than in the midst of peace.

Sandt.—The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing that could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that lightening which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our homes. Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and where no perfect love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir, at the celebrity and the distinctions you have obtained?

Kotzebue.—My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them, quite satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age—neither in difficult nor in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself the tutor or the guardian of mankind.

Sandt.—I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and gratefully. You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the travels; but, pardon my question, who called you to the courts of princes in strange countries?

Sandt.—They have no more right to take you away from your country, than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to the land that bore you, and were not at liberty—(if right and liberty are one, and unless they are, they are good for nothing)—you were not at liberty, I repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.

Kotzebue.—No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of freedom are these!

Sandt.—A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the servants of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in his ear that he may go away, that he may work in another country, that he may ask to be fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and tasks are given for his hands to execute. Being a German, you voluntarily placed yourself in a position where you might eventually be coerced to act against Germans.

Sandt.—We all do; yet duties are transgressed, and daily. Where the will is weak in accepting, it is weaker in resisting. Already have you left the ranks of your fellow-citizens—already have you taken the enlisting money and marched away.

Kotzebue.—Phrases! metaphors! and let me tell you, M. Sandt, not very polite ones. You have hitherto seen little of the world, and you speak rather the language of books than of men.

Sandt.—What! are books written by some creatures of less intellect than ours? I fancied them to convey the language and reasonings of men. I was wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue! They are, in general, the productions of such as have neither the constancy of courage, nor the continuity of sense, to act up to what they know to be right, or to maintain it, even in words, to the end of their lives. You are aware that I am speaking now of political ethics. This is the worst I can think of the matter, and bad enough is this.

Kotzebue.—You misunderstand me. Our conduct must fall in with our circumstances. We may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our patriotism, not harsh, nor intolerant, nor contracted. The philosophical mind should consider the whole world as its habitation, and not look so minutely into it as to see the lines that divide nations and governments; much less should it act the part of a busy shrew, and take pleasure in giving loose to the tongue, at finding things a little out of place.

Sandt.—We will leave the shrew where we find her: she certainly is better with the comedian than with the philosopher. But this indistinctness in the moral and political line begets indifference. He who does not keep his own country more closely in view than any other, soon mixes land with sea, and sea with air, and loses sight of every thing, at least, for which he was placed in contact with his fellow men. Let us unite, if possible, with the nearest: Let usages and familiarities bind us: this being once accomplished, let us confederate for security and peace with all the people round, particularly with people of the same language, laws, and religion. We pour out wine to those about us, wishing the same fellowship and conviviality to others: but to enlarge the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony. We irrigate the ground in our gardens: the public road may require the water equally: yet we give it rather to our borders; and first to those that lie against the house! God himself did not fill the world at once with happy creatures: he enlivened one small portion of it with them, and began with single affections, as well as pure and unmixt. We must have an object and an aim, or our strength, if any strength belongs to us, will be useless.

Kotzebue.—There is much good sense in these remarks: but I am not at all times at leisure and in readiness to receive instruction. I am old enough to have laid down my own plans of life; and I trust I am by no means deficient in the relations I bear to society.

Sandt.—Lovest thou thy children? Oh! my heart bleeds! But the birds can fly; and the nest requires no warmth from the parent, no cover against the rain and the wind.

Kotzebue.—This is wildness: this is agony. Your face is laden with large drops; some of them tears, some not. Be more rational and calm, my dear young man! and less enthusiastic.

Sandt.—They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by force. Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must love them more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all, profess a parity.

Sandt.—I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could speedily bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their ears were calked and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died sadly!

Kotzebue.—Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of authority, your voice is gentle—almost plaintive.

Kotzebue.—Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor require it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each other for many years.

Sandt.—What! should I have asked you such a question as the last, after long knowing you?

Sandt.—I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them grievously; a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again and again I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that fasten them to pillar and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the remains of respect for you, in your domestic state, I should never have held with you this conversation. Germany is Germany: she ought to have nothing political in common with what is not Germany. Her freedom and security now demand that she celebrate the communion of the faithful. Our country is the only one in all the explored regions on earth that never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia boast it falsely; France falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of Darius fell and crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and Rome was buried in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not. Britain, the wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the most literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we surrender them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled cities, and enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push us upon one another's sword, and command us to thank God for the victories that enslave us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are the festivals we hold, on the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed are those who lie under them! blessed are also those who remember what they were, and call upon their names in the holiness of love.

Kotzebue.—Moderate the transport that inflames and consumes you. There is no dishonour in a nation being conquered by a stronger.

Sandt.—There may be great dishonour in letting it be stronger; great, for instance, in our disunion.

Sandt.—No, sir, no: we have not been, in turn or out. Our puny princes were disarmed by promises and lies: they accepted paper crowns from the very thief who was sweeping into his hat their forks and spoons. A cunning traitor snared incautious ones, plucked them, devoured them, and slept upon their feathers.

Kotzebue.—I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of our country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to us. We may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages of every capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.

Sandt.—Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed and hirelings.

Kotzebue.—The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival us in poetry, or in any works of imagination.

Sandt.—While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with England and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on our inferiority in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than they? Our mothers are like their mothers; our children are like their children; our limbs are as strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our desire of improvement in the arts and sciences is neither less vivid and generous, nor less temperate and well-directed. The Greeks were under disadvantages which never bore in any degree on us; yet they rose through them vigorously and erectly. They were Asiatic in what ought to be the finer part of the affections; their women were veiled and secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave, never sat by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated in the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the future; and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush we not at our degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure at finding, in the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms ultimately mingled, although the character of the governors, and perhaps of the governed, is congenial to few. What delight, then, must overflow on Europe, from seeing the mother of her noblest nation rear again her venerable head, and bless all her children for the first time united!

Kotzebue.—In such confederacy I see nothing but conspiracy and rebellion, and I am bound, I tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if possible.

Sandt.—May no pain follow the cutting of the knot! But think again: think better: spare me!

Sandt.—That would serve nobody: yet, if in your opinion betraying me can benefit you or your family, deem it no harm; so much greater has been done by you in abandoning the cause of Germany. Here is your paper; here is your ink.

Sandt.—From maxims and conduct such as yours, spring up the brood, the necessity, and the occupation of them. There would be none, if good men thought it a part of goodness to be as active and vigilant as the bad. I must go, sir! Return to yourself in time! How it pains me to think of losing you! Be my friend!

Sandt, (having gone out.)—Perjurer and profaner! Yet his heart is kindly. I must grieve for him! Away with tenderness! I disrobe him of the privilege to pity me or to praise me, as he would have done had I lived of old. Better men shall do more. God calls them: me too he calls: I will enter the door again. May the greater sacrifice bring the people together, and hold them evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim follows willingly. (Enters again.)

Alas! alas! no man ever fell alone. How many innocent always perish with one guilty! and writhe longer!

Unhappy children! I shall weep for you elsewhere. Some days are left me. In a very few the whole of this little world will lie between us. I have sanctified in you the memory of your father. Genius but reveals dishonour, commiseration covers it.

THE JEWELLER'S WIFE.

A PASSAGE IN THE CAREER OF EL EMPECINADO.

When the Empecinado, after escaping from the Burgo de Osma, rejoined his band, and again repaired to the favourite skirmishing ground on the banks of the Duero, he found the state of affairs in Old Castile becoming daily less favourable for his operations. The French overran the greater part of the province, and visited with severe punishment any disobedience of their orders; so that the peasantry no longer dared to assist the guerillas as they had previously done. Many of the villages on the Duero had become afrancesados, not, it is true, through love, but through dread of the invaders, and in the hope of preserving themselves from pillage and oppression. However much the people in their hearts might wish success to men like the Empecinado, the guerillas were too few and too feeble to afford protection to those who, by giving them assistance or information, would incur the displeasure of the French. The clergy were the only class that, almost without an exception, remained stanch to the cause of Spanish independence, and their purses and refectories were ever open to those who took up arms in its defence.

Noways deterred by this unfavourable aspect of affairs, the Empecinado resolved to carry on the war in Old Castile, even though unaided and alone. He established his bivouac in the pine-woods of Coca, and sent out spies towards Somosierra and Burgos, to get information of some convoy of which the capture might yield both honour and profit.

It was on the second morning after the departure of the spies, and a few minutes before daybreak, that the little camp was aroused by a shot from a sentry, placed on the skirt of the wood. In an instant every man was on his feet. It was the Empecinado's custom, when outlying in this manner, to make one-half his band sleep fully armed and equipped, with their horses saddled and bridled beside them; and a fortunate precaution it was in this instance. Scarcely had the men time to untether and spring upon their horses, when the sentry galloped headlong into the camp.

One of the Empecinado's first qualities was his presence of mind, which never deserted him even in the most critical situations. Instantly forming up that moiety of his men which was already in the saddle, he left a detachment in front of those who were hastily saddling and arming, and with the remainder retired a little to the left of the open ground on which the bivouac was established. Almost before he had completed this arrangement, the jingling of arms and clattering of horses' feet were heard, and a squadron of French cavalry galloped down the glade. The Empecinado gave the word to charge, and as Fuentes at the head of one party advanced to meet them, he himself attacked them in flank. The French, not having anticipated much opposition from a foe whom they had expected to find sleeping, were somewhat surprized at the fierce resistance they met. A hard fight took place, rendered still more confused by the darkness, or rather by a faint grey light, which was just beginning to appear, and gave a shadowy indistinctness to surrounding objects. The Spaniards were inferior in number to their opponents, and it was beginning to go hard with them, when the remainder of the guerillas, now armed and mounted, came up to their assistance. On perceiving this accession to their adversaries' force, the French thought they had been led into an ambuscade, and retreating in tolerable order to the edge of the wood, at last fairly turned tail and ran for it, leaving several killed and wounded on the ground, and were pursued for some distance by the guerillas, who, however, only succeeded in making one prisoner. This was a young man in the dress of a peasant, who being badly mounted, was easily overtaken. On being brought before the Empecinado, the latter with no small surprize recognized a native of Aranda, named Pedro Gutierrez, who was one of the emissaries he had sent out two days previously to get information concerning the movements of the enemy.

With pale cheek and faltering voice, the prisoner answered the Empecinado's interrogatories. It appears that he had been detected as a spy by the French, who had given him his choice between a halter and the betrayal of his countrymen and employers. With the fear of death before his eyes, he had consented to turn traitor.

The deepest silence prevailed among the guerillas during his narrative, and remained unbroken for a full minute after he had concluded. The Empecinado's brow was black as thunder, and his features assumed an expression which the trembling wretch well knew how to interpret.

"Que podia hacer, señores?" said the culprit, casting an appealing, imploring glance around him. "The rope was round my neck; I have an aged father and am his only support. Life is very sweet. What could I do?"

"Die!" replied the Empecinado, in his deep stern voice—"Die like a man then, instead of dying like a dog now!"

He turned his back upon him, and ten minutes later, the body of the unfortunate spy was dangling from the branches of a neighbouring tree, and the guerillas marched off to seek another and a safer bivouac.

A few days after this incident the other spies returned, and after receiving their report, and consulting with his lieutenant, Mariano Fuentes, the Empecinado broke up the little camp, and led his band in the direction of the camino réal.

Along that part of the high-road, from Madrid to the Pyrenees, which winds through the mountain range of Onrubias, an escort of fifty French dragoons was marching, about an hour before dusk, on an evening of early spring. Two carriages, and three or four heavily-laden carts, each drawn by half-a-dozen mules, composed the whole of the convoy; the value of which, however, might be deemed considerable, judging from the strength of the escort, and the precautions observed by the officer in command to avoid a surprise—precautions which were not of much avail; for, on reaching a spot where the road widened considerably, and was traversed by a broad ravine, the party was suddenly charged on either flank by double their number of guerillas. The dragoons made a gallant resistance, but it was a short one, for they had no room or time to form in any order, and were far overmatched in the hand-to-hand contest that ensued. With the very first who fled went a gentleman in civilian's garb, who sprang out of the most elegant of the two carriages, and mounting a fine Andalusian horse led by a groom, was off like the wind, disregarding the shrieks of his travelling companion, a female two or three-and-twenty years old, of great beauty, and very richly attired. The cries and alarm of the lady thus deserted were redoubled, when an instant later a guerilla of fierce aspect presented himself at the carriage-door.

"Have no fear, señora," said the Empecinado, "you are in the hands of honourable men, and no harm shall be done you." And having by suchlike assurances succeeded in calming her terrors, he obtained from her some information as to the contents of the carts and carriages, as well as regarding herself and her late companion.

The man who had abandoned her, and consulted his own safety by flying with the escort, was her husband, Monsieur Barbot, jeweller and diamond merchant to the late King Charles the Fourth. Alarmed by the unsettled state of things in Spain, he was hastening to take refuge in France, with his handsome wife and his great wealth—of the latter of which no inconsiderable portion was contained in the carriage, in the shape of caskets of jewellery, diamonds, and other valuables.

Repairing to the neighbouring mountains, the guerillas proceeded to examine their booty, which the Empecinado permitted them to divide among themselves, with the exception of the carriage and its contents, including the lady, which he reserved for his own share.

On the following day came letters from the French military governor of Aranda del Duero, and from Monsieur Barbot, who had taken refuge in that town, and offered a large sum as ransom for his wife. To this application the Empecinado did not vouchsafe any answer, but marched off to his native village of Castrillo, taking with him jewels, carriage, and lady. The latter he established in the house of his brother Manuel, recommending her to the care of his sister-in-law, and commanding that she should be treated with all possible respect, and her wishes attended to on every point.

The Empecinado's exultation at the success of his enterprize was great, but he little foresaw all the danger and trouble that his rich capture was hereafter to occasion him. He had become violently enamoured of his fair prisoner, and in order to have leisure to pay his court to her, he sent off his partida on a distant expedition under the command of Fuentes, and himself remained at Castrillo, doing his utmost to find favour in the eyes of the beautiful Madame Barbot. He was then in the prime of life, a remarkably handsome man, and notwithstanding that the French affected to treat him as a brigand, his courage and patriotism were admitted by the unprejudiced among all parties, and his bold and successful deeds had already procured him a degree of renown that was an additional recommendation of him to the fair sex. It may not, therefore, be deemed very surprising that, after the first few days of her captivity were passed, and she had become a little used to the novelty of her position, the lady began to consider the Empecinado with some degree of favour, and seemed not altogether disposed to be inconsolable in her widowhood. He on his part spared no pains to please her. His very nature seemed changed by the violence of his new passion; and so great was the metamorphosis that his best friends scarcely recognized him for the same man. He seemed totally to have forgotten the career to which he had devoted himself, and the hatred and war of extermination he had vowed against the French. The restless activity and spirit of enterprize which formed such distinguishing traits in his character, were completely lulled to sleep by the charms of the fair Barbot. Nor was the change in his external appearance less striking. Aware that the rude manners and attire of a guerilla were not likely to please the fastidious taste of a town-bred dame, he hastened to discard them. His rough bushy beard and mustaches were carefully trimmed and adjusted by the most expert barber of the neighbourhood; his sheepskin jacket, heavy boots, and jingling double-roweled spurs thrown aside, and in their place he assumed the national garb, so well adapted to show off a handsome person, and which, although now almost disused throughout Spain, far surpasses in elegance the prevailing costumes of the nineteenth century: a short light jacket of black velvet, and waistcoat of the richest silk, both profusely decorated with gold filigree buttons; purple velvet breeches fastened at the knee with bunches of ribands; silk stockings, and falling boots of chamois leather, by the most expert maker in Cordova; a crimson silk sash round his waist, and round his neck a silk handkerchief, of which the ends were drawn through a magnificent jewelled ring. A green velvet cap, ornamented with sables and silver, and an ample cloak trimmed with silver lace, the spoil of a commandant of French gendarmes, completed this picturesque costume.

Thus attired, and mounted on a splendid horse, the Empecinado escorted the object of his new flame to all the fêtes and merry-makings of the surrounding country. Not a romeria in the neighbouring villages, not a fair or a bull-fight in all the valley of the Duero, but were graced by the presence of Martin Diez and his dulcinea, whose fine horse and gallant equipment, but more especially the beauty of the rider, inspired universal admiration. As might be expected, many of those who had known the Empecinado a poor vine-dresser, became envious of his good fortune, and others who envied him not, were indignant at seeing him waste his time in such degrading effeminacy, instead of following up the career which he had so nobly begun. There was much murmuring, therefore, to which, however, he gave little heed; and several weeks had passed in the manner above described, when an incident occurred to rouse him from the sort of lethargy in which he was sunk.

A despatch reached him from the Captain-General, Don Gregorio Cuesta, requiring his immediate presence at Ciudad Rodrigo, there to receive directions concerning the execution of a service of the greatest importance, and which was to be intrusted to him.

This order had its origin in circumstances of which the Empecinado was totally ignorant. The jeweller Barbot, finding that neither large offers nor threats of punishment had any effect upon the Empecinado, who persisted in keeping his wife prisoner, made interest with the Duke of Infantado, then general of one of the Spanish armies, and besought him to exert his influence in favour of the captive lady, and to have her restored to her friends. The duke, who was a very important personage at the court of Charles the Fourth, and the favourite of Ferdinand the Seventh at the beginning of his reign, entertained a particular friendship for Barbot; and, if the chronique scandaleuse of Madrid might be believed, a still more particular one for his wife. He immediately wrote to General Cuesta, desiring that the lady might be sent back to her husband without delay, as well as all the jewels and other spoil that had been seized by the Empecinado.

With much difficulty did the guerilla make up his mind to abandon the inglorious position, and to go where duty called him. Strongly recommending his captive to his brother and sister-in-law, he set out for Ciudad Rodrigo, escorted by a sergeant and ten men of his partida. They had not proceeded half a mile from Castrillo, when, from behind a hedge bordering the road, a shot was fired, and the bullet slightly wounded the Empecinado's charger. Two of the escort pushed their horses through the hedge, and immediately returned, dragging between them a grey-haired old man, seventy years of age, who clutched in his wrinkled fingers a rusty carbine that had just been discharged.

"He is surely mad!" exclaimed the Empecinado, gazing in astonishment at the venerable assassin. "Dime, viejo; do you know me? And why do you seek my life?"

"Si, si, te conozes. You are the Empecinado—the bloody Empecinado. Give me back my Pedro, whom you murdered. Ay di me! mi Pedrillo, te han matado!"

And the old man's frame quivered with rage, as he glared on the Empecinado with an expression of unutterable hate.

"'Tis old Gutierrez, the father of Pedro, who was hung in the Piñares de Coca, for betraying us to the French."

"Throw his carbine into yonder pool, and leave the poor wretch," said the Empecinado; "his son deserved the death he met."

"He missed his aim to-day, but he may point truer another time," said one of the men, half drawing a pistol from his holster.

"Maldito seas!" screamed the old man, casting himself in the dust of the road, in a paroxysm of impotent fury. "Maldito! Maldito! Ay de mi! mi Pedrillo!"

And his curses and lamentations continued till the guerillas were out of hearing.

On arriving at Ciudad Rodrigo, the Empecinado went immediately to General Cuesta, who, although he did not receive him unkindly, could not but blame him greatly for the enormous crime he had committed in carrying off a lady who was distinguished by so mighty a personage as the Duke of Infantado. He told him it was absolutely necessary to devise some plan by which the Duke's anger might be appeased. Murat also had sent a message to the central junta, saying, that if satisfaction were not given, he would send troops to lay waste the whole district of Penafiel, in which Castrillo was situated; and it was probable, that if he had not done so already, it was because a large portion of the inhabitants of that district were believed to be well affected to the French. Without exactly telling him what he must do, the old general gave him a despatch for the corregidor of Penafiel, and desired him to present himself before that functionary, and concert with him the measures to be taken.

The Empecinado took his leave, and was quitting the governor's palace when he overtook at the door an avogado, who was a countryman of his, and whom he had left at Castrillo when he set out from that place. The sight of this man was a ray of light to the Empecinado, who immediately suspected that his enemies were intriguing against him. He proposed to the lawyer that they should walk to the inn, to which the latter consented. They had to traverse a lonely place, known by the name of San Francisco's Meadow, and on arriving there, behind the shelter of some walls, the Empecinado seized the advocate by the collar, and swore he would strangle him if he did not instantly confess what business had brought him to Ciudad Rodrigo, as well as all the plans or plots against the Empecinado to which he might be privy.

The lawyer, who had known Diez from his childhood, and was fully aware of his desperate character and of his own peril, trembled for his life, and besought him earnestly to use no violence, for that he was willing to tell all he knew. Thereupon the Empecinado loosened his grasp, which had wellnigh throttled the poor avogado, and cocking a pistol, as a sort of warning to the other to tell the truth, bade him sit down beside him and proceed with his narrative.

The lawyer informed him that the ayuntamiento or corporation of Castrillo, and those of all the towns and villages of the district, found themselves in great trouble on account of the convoy he had intercepted, and more particularly of the lady whom he kept prisoner, and whose friends it appeared were persons of much influence with both contending parties, for that the junta and the French had alike demanded her liberty; and while the latter were about to send troops to put the whole country to fire and sword, the former, as well as the Spanish generals, had refused to afford them any protection against the consequences of her detention, and accused the ayuntamiento and the priests of encouraging the Empecinado to hold her in captivity. He himself had been sent to Ciudad Rodrigo to beg General Cuesta's advice, and the general had declared himself unable to assist them, but recommended them to restore the lady and treasure, if they did not wish the French to lay waste the country, and take by force the bone of contention.

The Empecinado, suspecting that General Cuesta had not used all due frankness with him in this matter, handed to the lawyer the letter that had been given him for the corregidor of Penafiel, and compelled him, much against his will, to open and read it. Its contents coincided with what the avogado had told him; the general advising the corregidor to use every means to compromise the matter, rather than wait till the French should do themselves justice by the strong hand.

Perceiving that, from various motives, every body was against him in this matter, the Empecinado bethought himself how he should get out of the scrape.

"As an old friend and countryman, and more especially as a lawyer," said he to the avogado, "you are the most fitting man to give me advice in this difficulty. Tell me, then, what I ought to do, in order that our native town, which is innocent in the matter, should suffer no prejudice."

"You speak now like a sensible man," replied the other, "and as a friend will I advise you. Let us immediately set off to Penafiel, deliver the general's letter to the corregidor, and take him with us to Castrillo. There, for form's sake, an examination of your conduct in the affair can take place. You shall give up the jewels, the carriage, and the lady, and set off immediately to join your partida."

"To the greater part of that I willingly agree," said the Empecinado. "The jewels are buried in the cellar, and the carriage is in the stable. Take both when you list. But as to the lady, before I give her up, I will give up my own soul. She is my property; I took her in fair fight, and at the risk of my life."

The Empecinado shook his head, but led the way to the inn, where they took horse, and the next day reached Penafiel, whence they set out the following morning for Castrillo, which is a couple of leagues further, accompanied by the corregidor, his secretary, and two alguazils. The Empecinado was induced to leave his escort at Penafiel, in order that the sort of pro formâ investigation which was to be gone through might not appear to have taken place under circumstances of intimidation. The avogado started a couple of hours earlier than the rest of the party, to have things in readiness, so that the proceedings might be got through as rapidly as possible.

It was about eight o'clock on a fine summer's morning that the Empecinado and his companions reached Castrillo. As they entered the town, an old mendicant, who was lying curled up like a dog in the sunshine under the porch of a house, lifted his head at the noise of the horses. As his eyes rested upon Diez, he made a bound forward with an agility extraordinary in one of his years, and fell almost under the feet of the Empecinado's horse, making the startled animal spring aside with a violence and suddenness sufficient to unhorse many a less practised rider than the one who bestrode him. The Empecinado lifted his whip in anger, but the old man, who had risen to his feet, showed no sign of fear, and as he stood in the middle of the road, and immediately in the path of the Empecinado, the latter recognized the wild features and long grey hair of old Gutierrez.

"Maldito seas!" cried the old man, extending his arms towards the guerilla. "Murderer! the hour of vengeance is nigh. I saw it in my dreams. My Pedrillo showed me his assassin trampled under the feet of horses. Asesino! Venga la hora de tu muerte!"

And the old man, who was half crazed by his misfortunes, relapsed into an incoherent strain of lamentations for his son, and curses upon him whom he called his murderer.

The Empecinado, who, on recognizing old Gutierrez, had lowered his riding-whip, and listened unmoved to his curses and predictions, rode forward, explaining as he went, to the astonished corregidor, the scene that had just occurred. A little further on he separated from his companions, giving them rendezvous at ten o'clock at the house of the ayuntamiento. Proceeding to his brother's dwelling, he paid a visit to Madame Barbot, breakfasted with her, and then prepared to keep his appointment. He placed a brace of pistols and a poniard in his belt, and taking a loaded trabuco or blunderbuss, in his hand, wrapped himself in his cloak so as to conceal his weapons, and repaired to the town-hall.

He found the tribunal already installed, and every thing in readiness. Saluting the corregidor, he began pacing up and down the room without taking off his cloak. The corregidor repeatedly urged him to be seated, but he refused, and continued his walk, replying to the questions that were put to him, his answers to which were duly written down. About a quarter of an hour had passed in this manner, when a noise of feet and talking was heard in the street, and the Empecinado, as he passed one of the windows that looked out upon the plaza, saw, with no very comfortable feelings, that a number of armed peasants were entering the town hall. He perceived that he was betrayed, but his presence of mind stood his friend, and with his usual promptitude, he in a moment decided how he should act. Without allowing it to appear that he had any suspicion of what was going on, he walked to the door of the audience chamber, and before any one could interfere, shut and locked it. Then stepping up to the corregidor, he threw off his cloak, and presented his trabuco at the magistrate's head.

"Señor Corregidor," said he, "this is not our agreement, but a base act of treachery. Commend yourself to God, for you are about to die."

The corregidor was so dreadfully terrified at these words, and at the menacing action of the Empecinado, that he swooned away, and fell down under the table—the escribano fled into an adjoining chamber, and concealed himself under a bed—while the alguazils, trembling with fear, threw themselves upon their knees, and petitioned for mercy. The Empecinado, finding himself with so little trouble master of the field of battle, took possession of the papers that were lying upon the table, and, unlocking the door, proceeded to the principal staircase, which he found occupied by inhabitants of the town, armed with muskets and fowling-pieces. Placing his blunderbuss under his arm, with his hand upon the trigger, "Make way!" cried he; "the first who moves a finger may reckon upon the contents of my trabuco." His menace and resolute character produced the desired effect; a passage was opened, and he left the house in triumph. On reaching the street, however, he found a great crowd of men, women, and even children, assembled, who occupied the plaza and all the adjacent streets, and received him with loud cries of "Death to the Empecinado! Muera el ladron y mal Cristiano!" The armed men whom he had left in the town-house fired several shots at him from the windows, but nobody dared to lay hands upon him, as he marched slowly and steadily through the crowd, trabuco in hand, and casting glances on either side that made those upon whom they fell shrink involuntarily backwards.

On the low roof of one of the houses of the plaza, that formed the angle of the Calle de la Cruz, or street of the cross, old Gutierrez had taken his station. With the fire of insanity in his bloodshot eyes, and a grin of exultation upon his wasted features, he witnessed the persecution of the Empecinado, and while his ears drank in the yells and hootings of the multitude, he added his shrill cracked voice to the uproar. When the shots were fired from the town-hall, he bounded and capered upon the platform, clapping his meagre fingers together in ecstasy; but as the Empecinado got further from the house, and the firing was discontinued, an expression of anxiety replaced the look of triumph that had lighted up the old maniac's face. Diez still moved on unhurt, and was now within a few paces of the house on which Gutierrez had perched himself. The old man's uneasiness increased. "Va a escapar!" muttered he to himself; "they will let him escape. Oh, if I had a gun, my Pedrillo would soon be avenged!"

The Empecinado was passing under the house. A sudden thought struck Gutierrez. Stamping with his foot, he broke two or three of the tiles on which he was standing, and snatching up a large heavy fragment, he leaned over the edge of the roof to get a full view of the Empecinado, who was at that moment leaving the plaza and entering the Calle de la Cruz. In five seconds more he would be out of sight. As it was, it was only by leaning very far forward that Gutierrez could see him, walking calmly along, and keeping at bay the angry but cowardly mob that yelped at his heels, like a parcel of village curs pursuing a bloodhound, whose look alone prevents their too near approach.

Throwing his left arm round a chimney, the old man swung himself forward, and with all the force that he possessed, hurled the tile at the object of his hate. The missile struck the Empecinado upon the temple, and he fell, stunned and bleeding, to the ground.

"Viva!" screamed Gutierrez; but a cry of agony followed the shout of exultation. The chimney by which the old man supported himself was loose and crumbling, and totally unfit to bear his weight as he hung on by it, and leaned forward to gloat over his vengeance. It tottered for a moment, and then fell with a crash into the street. The height was not great, but the pavement was sharp and uneven; the old man pitched upon his head, and when lifted up was already a corpse.

When the mob saw the Empecinado fall, they threw themselves upon him with as much ferocity as they had previously shown cowardice, and beat and ill-treated him in every possible manner. Not satisfied with that, they bound him hand and foot, and pushed him through a cellar window, throwing after him stones, and every thing they could find lying about the street. At last, wearied by their own brutality, they left him for dead, and he remained in that state till nightfall, when the corregidor and the ayuntamiento proceeded to inspect his body, in order to certify his death, and have him buried. When he was brought out of the cellar, however, they perceived he still breathed, and sent for a surgeon, and also for a priest to administer the last sacraments. They then carried him upon a ladder to the posito, or public granary, a strong building, where they considered he would be in safety, and put him to bed, bathed in blood and covered with wounds and bruises.

The corregidor, fearing that the news of the riot, and of the death of the Empecinado, would reach Penafiel, and that the escort which had been left there, and the many partizans that Diez had in that town, would come over to Castrillo to avenge his death, persuaded one of the curés or parish priests of the latter place, to go over to Penafiel in all haste, and, counterfeiting great alarm, to spread the report that the French had entered Castrillo, seized the Empecinado, and carried him off to Aranda. This was accordingly done; and the Empecinado's escort being made aware of the vicinity of the French and the risk they ran, immediately mounted their horses and marched to join Mariano Fuentes, accompanied by upwards of fifty young men, all partizans of the Empecinado, and eager to revenge him. This matter being arranged, the corregidor had the jewels that were buried in the cellar of Manuel Diez dug up, and having taken possession of them, and installed Madame Barbot with all due attention in one of the principal houses of the town, he forwarded a report to General Cuesta of all that had occurred. The general immediately sent an escort to conduct the lady and the treasure to Ciudad Rodrigo, and ordered that as soon as the Empecinado was in a state to be moved, he should also be sent under a strong guard to that city.

Meanwhile, the Empecinado's vigorous constitution triumphed over the injuries he had received, and he was getting so rapidly better, that for his safer custody the corregidor thought it necessary to have him heavily ironed. Deeming it impossible he should escape, and there being no troops in the village, no sentry was placed over him, so that at night his friends were able to hold discourse with him through the grating of one of the windows of the posito. In this manner he contrived to send a message to his brother Manuel, who, having also got into trouble on account of Madame Barbot's detention, had been compelled to take refuge in the mountains of Bilbuena, three leagues from Castrillo. Manuel took advantage of a dark night to steal into the town in disguise, and to speak with the Empecinado. He informed him that the superior of the Bernardine Monastery, in the Sierra de Balbuena, had been advised that it was the intention of the Empecinado's enemies to deliver him over to the French, in order that they might shoot him. The Empecinado replied, that he strongly suspected there was some such plot in agitation, and desired his brother to seek out Mariano Fuentes, and order him to march his band into the neighbourhood of Castrillo, and that on their arrival he would send them word what to do.

Eight days elapsed, and the Empecinado was now completely cured of his wounds, so that he was in much apprehension lest he should be sent off to Ciudad Rodrio before the arrival of Fuentes. On the eighth night, however, his brother came to the window, and informed him that the partida was in the neighbourhood, and only waited his orders to march upon Castrillo, rescue him, and revenge the treatment he had received. This the Empecinado strongly enjoined them not to do, but desired his brother to come to his prison door at two o'clock the next morning with a led horse, and that he had the means to set himself at liberty. Manuel Diez did as he was ordered, wondering, however, in what manner the Empecinado intended to get out of the posito, which was a solidly constructed edifice with a massive door and grated windows. But the next night, when the guerilla heard the horses approaching his prison, he seized the door by an iron bar that traversed it on the inner side, and, exerting his prodigious strength, tore it off the hinges as though it had been of pasteboard. His feet being fastened together by a chain, he was compelled to sit sideways upon the saddle; but so elated was he to find himself once more at liberty that he pushed his horse into a gallop, and with his fetters clanking as he went, dashed through the streets of Castrillo, to the astonishment and consternation of the inhabitants, who knew not what devil's dance was going on in their usually quiet town.

At Olmos, a village a quarter of a league from Castrillo, the fugitives halted, and roused a smith, who knocked off the Empecinado's irons. After a short rest at the house of an approved friend they remounted their horses, and a little after daybreak reached the place where Fuentes had taken up his bivouac. The Empecinado was received with great rejoicing, and immediately resumed the command. He passed a review of his band, and found it consisted of two hundred and twenty men, all well mounted and armed.

Great was the alarm of the inhabitants of Castrillo when they found the prison broken open and the prisoner gone; and their terror was increased a hundred-fold, when a few hours later news was brought that the Empecinado was marching towards the town at the head of a strong body of cavalry. Some concealed themselves in cellars and suchlike hiding-places, others left the town and fled to the neighbouring woods; but the majority, despairing of escape by human means from the terrible anger of the Empecinado, shut themselves up in their houses, closed the doors and windows, and prayed to the Virgin for deliverance from the impending evil. Never had there been seen in Castrillo such a counting of rosaries and beating of breasts, such genuflexions, and mumbling of aves and paters, as upon that morning.

At noon the Empecinado entered the town at the head of his band, trumpets sounding, and the men firing their pistols and carbines into the air, in sign of joy at having recovered their leader. Forming up the partida in the market-place, the Empecinado sent for the corregidor and other authorities, who presented themselves before him pale and trembling, and fully believing they had not five minutes to live.

"Fear nothing!" said the Empecinado, observing their terror. "It is certain I have met foul treatment at your hands; and it was the harder to bear coming from my own countrymen and townsfolk. But you have been misled, and will one day repent your conduct. I have forgotten your ill usage, and only remember the poverty of my native town, and the misery in which this war has plunged many of its inhabitants."

So saying, he delivered to the alcalde and the parish priests a hundred ounces of gold for the relief of the poor and support of the hospital, and ten more to be spent in a novillada, or bull-bait and festival for the whole town. Cutting short their thanks and excuses, he left Castrillo and marched to the village of Sacramenia, where he quartered his men, and, accompanied by Mariano Fuentes, went to pay a visit to a neighbouring monastery. The monks received him with open arms and a hearty welcome, hailing him as the main prop of the cause of independence in Old Castile. They sat down to dinner in the refectory; and the conversation turning upon the state of the country, the Empecinado expressed his unwillingness to carry on the war in that province, on account of the little confidence he could place in the inhabitants, so many of whom had become afrancesados; and as a proof of this, he related all that had occurred to him at Castrillo. Upon hearing this the abbot, who was a man distinguished for his talents and patriotism, recommended Diez to lead his band to New Castile, where he would not have to encounter the persecutions of those who, having known him poor and insignificant, envied him his good fortune, and sought to throw obstacles in his path. He offered to get him letters from the general of the order of San Bernardo to the superiors of the various monasteries, in order that he might receive such assistance and support as they could give, and he might chance to require.

"No one is a prophet in his own country," said the good father; "Mahomet in his native town of Medina met with the same ill-treatment that you, Martin Diez, have encountered in the place of your birth. Abandon, then, a province which does not recognize your value, and go where your reputation has already preceded you, to defend the holy cause of Spain and of religion."

Struck by the justice of this reasoning, the Empecinado resolved to change the scene of his operations, and the next morning marched his squadron in the direction of New Castile.

THE TALE OF A TUB: AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER.

HOW JACK RAN MAD A SECOND TIME.

After Jack and Martin parted company, you may remember that Jack, who had turned his face northward, got into high favour with the landlord of the North Farm Estate, who, being mightily edified with his discourses and sanctimonious demeanour, and not aware of his having been mad before, or being, perchance, just as mad himself—took him in, made much of him, gave him a cottage upon his manor to live in, and built him a tabernacle in which he might hold forth when the spirit moved him. In process of time, however, it happened that North Farm and the Albion Estates came into the possession of one proprietor, Esquire Bull, in whose house Martin had always been retained as domestic chaplain—at least, ever since that desperate scuffle with Lord Peter and his crew, when he tried to land some Spanish smugglers on the coast, for the purpose of carrying off Martin, and establishing himself in Squire Bull's house in his stead. Squire Bull, who was a man of his word, and wished to leave all things on North Farm as he found them, Jack and his tabernacle included, undertook at once to pay him a reasonable salary, with the free use of his house and tabernacle to him and his heirs for ever. But knowing that on a previous occasion, (which you may recollect,⁴⁶) Jack's melancholy had gone so far that he had hanged himself, though he was cut down just before giving up the ghost, and by dint of bloodletting and galvanism, had been revived; and also that, notwithstanding his periodical fits and hallucinations, he could beat even Peter himself, who had been his instructor, for cunning and casuistry, he took care that, before Jack was allowed to take possession under his new lease, every thing should be made square between them. So he had the terms of their indenture all written out on parchment, signed, sealed, and delivered before witnesses, and even got a private Act of Parliament carried through, for the purpose of making every thing between them more secure. And well it was for the Squire that he bethought himself of his precaution in time, as you will afterwards hear.

This union of the two entailed properties in the Bull family, brought Jack and Martin a good deal more into one anothers' company than they had formerly been; and 'twas clear, that Jack, who had now got somewhat ashamed of his threadbare raiment, and tired of his spare oatmeal diet, was mightily struck with the dignified air and comfortable look of Martin, and grudged him the frequency with which he was invited to Squire Bull's table. By degrees, he began to conform his own uncouth manner to an imitation of his. He wore a better coat, which he no longer rubbed against the wall to take the gloss from off it; he ceased to interlard all his ordinary speech with texts of Scripture; his snuffle abated audibly; he gave up his habit of extempore rhapsody, and lost, in a great measure, his aversion to Christmas tarts and plum-pudding. After a time, he might even be seen with a fishing-rod over his shoulder; then he contrived sundry improvements in gun-locks and double-barrels, for which he took out a patent, and in fact did not entirely escape the suspicion of being a poacher. He held assemblies in his house, where at times he allowed a little singing; nay, on one occasion, a son of his—for he had now a large family—was found accompanying a psalm-tune upon the (barrel) organ, and it was rumoured about the house, that Jack, though he thought it prudent to disclaim this overture, had no great objection to it. Be that as it may, it is certain, that instead of his old peaked hat and band, Jack latterly took to wearing broad-brimmed beavers, which he was seen trying to mould into a spout-like shape, much resembling a shovel. And so far had the transformation gone, that the Vicar of Fudley, meeting him one evening walking to an assembly arrayed in a court coat, with this extraordinary hat upon his head, and a pair of silver buckles in his shoes, pulled off his hat to him at a little distance, mistaking him for a near relation of Martin, if not for Martin himself.

There was no great harm you will think in all these whims, and for my own part, I believe that Jack was never so honest a fellow as he was during this time, when he was profiting by Martin's example. He kept his own place, ruling his family in a quiet and orderly way, without disturbing the peace of his neighbours: and seemed to have forgotten his old tricks of setting people by the ears, and picking quarrels with constables and justices of the peace. Howbeit, those who knew him longest and best, always said that this was too good to last: that with him these intervals of sobriety and moderation were always the prelude to a violent access of his peculiar malady, and that by-and-bye he would break out again, and that there would be the devil to pay, and no pitch hot.

It so happened that Squire Bull had a good many small village schools on his Estate of North Farm, to which the former proprietors had always been in the custom of appointing the ushers themselves; and much to Jack's annoyance, when Squire Bull succeeded, the latter had taken care in his bargain with him, to keep the right of appointment to these in his own hand. But, at the same time, he told Jack fairly, that as he had no wish to dabble in Latin, Greek, or school learning himself, he left him at full liberty to say whether those whom he appointed were fit for the situation or not—so that if they turned out to be ignoramuses, deboshed fellows, or drunken dogs, Jack had only to say so on good grounds, and they were forthwith sent adrift. Matters went on for a time very smoothly on this footing. Nay, it was even said that Jack was inclined to carry his complaisance rather far, and after a time seldom troubled himself much about the usher's qualifications, provided his credentials were all right. He might ask the young fellow, who presented John's commission, perhaps, what was the first letter of the Greek alphabet? what was Latin for beef and greens? or where Moses was when the candle was blown out?—but if the candidate answered these questions correctly, and if there were no scandal or fama clamosa against him, as Jack in his peculiar jargon expressed it, he generally shook hands with him at once, put the key of the schoolhouse in his hand, and told him civilly to walk up-stairs.

The truth was, however, that in this respect Jack had little reason to complain; for though the Squire, in the outset, may not have been very particular as to his choice, and it was said once or twice gave an ushership to an old exciseman, on account of his skill in mensuration of fluids, he had latterly become very particular, and would not hear of settling any body as schoolmaster on North Farm, who did not come to him with an excellent character, certified by two or three respectable householders at least. But, strangely enough, it was observed that just in proportion as the Squire became more considerate, Jack became more arrogant, pestilent, and troublesome. Now-a-days he was always discovering some objection to the Squire's appointments: one usher, it seemed, spoke too low, another too loud, one used an ear-trumpet, another a pair of grass-green spectacles; one had no sufficient gifts for flogging; another flogged either too high or too low—(for Jack was like the deserter, there was no pleasing him as to the mode of conducting the operation;) and, finally, another was rejected because he was unacquainted with the vernacular of Ossian—to the great injury and damage, as was alleged, of two Highland chairmen, who at an advanced period of life were completing their education in the school in question. At first Squire Bull, honest gentleman, had given in to these strange humours on the part of Jack, believing that this new-born zeal on his part was in the main conscientious, though he could not help thinking it at times sufficiently whimsical and preposterous. He had even gone so far, occasionally, as to send Jack a list of those to whom he proposed giving the usherships, accompanied with a polite note, in some such terms as these, "Squire Bull presents his respects, and begs his good friend Jack will read over the enclosed list, and take the trouble of choosing for himself;" a request with which Jack was always ready to comply. And, further, as Jack had always a great hankering after little-goes and penny subscriptions of every kind, and was eternally trumpeting forth some new nostrum or scheme of this kind, as he used to call it, the Squire had been prevailed upon to purchase from him a good many tickets for these schemes from time to time, for which he always paid in hard cash, though I have never heard that any of them turned up prizes, except it may have been to Jack himself.

Jack, as we have said, grew bolder as the Squire became more complying, thinking that, in the matter of these appointments, as he had once got his hand in, it would be his own fault if he could not contrive to wriggle in his whole body. It so happened, too, that just about the very time that one of John's usherships became vacant, one of those atrabilious and hypochondriac fits came over Jack, with which, as we have said, he was periodically afflicted, and which, though they certainly unsettled his brain a little, only served, as in the case of other lunatics, to render him, during the paroxysm, more cunning, inventive, and mischievous. After moving about in a moping way for a day or two—mumbling in corners, and pretending to fall on his knees, in his old fashion, in the midst of the street, he suddenly got up, flung his broad-brimmed beaver into the kennel, trampled his wig in the dirt, so as to expose his large ears as of old, ran home, pulled his rusty black doublet out of the chest where it had lain for years, squeezing it on as he best could—for he had got somewhat corpulent in the mean time—and thus transfigured, he set out to consult the village attorney, with whom it was observed he remained closeted for several hours, turning over Burns' Justice, and perusing an office-copy of his indenture with the Squire—a planetary conjunction from which those who were astrologically given boded no good.

What passed between these worthies on this occasion—whether the attorney really persuaded Jack that, if he set about it, he would undertake to find him a flaw in his contract with Squire Bull, which would enable him to take the matter of the usherships into his own hand, and to do as he pleased; or whether Jack—as he seemed afterwards to admit in private—believed nothing of what the attorney told him, but was resolved to take advantage of the Squire's good-nature, and to run all risks as to the result, 'tis hard to say. Certain it was, however, that Jack posted down at once from the attorney's chamber to the village school, which happened to be then vacant, and gathering the elder boys about him, he told them he had reason to believe the Squire was about to send them another usher, very different from the last, who was a mortal enemy to marbles, pitch-and-toss, chuck-farthing, ginger-bread, and half holydays; with a corresponding liking to long tasks and short commons; that the use of the cane would be regularly taught, along with that of the globes, accompanied with cuts and other practical demonstrations; that the only chance of escaping this visitation was to take a bold line, and show face to the usher at once, since otherwise the chance was, that at no distant period they might be obliged to do the very reverse.

Jack further reasoned the matter with the boys learnedly, somewhat in this fashion—"That as no one could have so strong an interest in the matter, so no one could be so good a judge of the qualifications of the schoolmaster as the schoolboy; that the close and intimate relation between these parties was of the nature of a mutual contract, in the formation of which both had an equal right to be consulted; so that, without mutual consent, or, as it were, a harmonious call by the boys, there could be no valid ushership, but a mere usurpation of the power of the tawse, and unwarrantable administration of the birchen twig; that, further, this latter power involved a fundamental feature, in which they could not but feel they had all a deep interest—and which, he might say, lay at the bottom of the whole question; that he himself perfectly remembered that, in former days, the schoolboys had always exercised this privilege, which he held to be equally salutary and constitutional; and that he would, at his leisure, show them a private memorandum-book of his own, in which, though he had hitherto said nothing about it, he had found an entry to that effect made some thirty years before. In short, he told them, if they did not wish to be rode over rough-shod, they must stand up boldly for themselves, and try to get all the schools in the neighbourhood to join them, if necessary, in a regular barring-out, or general procession, in which they were to appear with flags and banners, bearing such inscriptions as the following: "Pro aris et focis"—"Liberty is like the air we breathe," &c. &c., and, lastly, in large gilt capitals—"No usher to be intruded into any school contrary to the will of the scholars in schoolroom assembled." And, in short, that this process was to be repeated until they succeeded in getting quit of Squire Bull's usher, and getting an usher who would flog them with all the forbearance and reserve with which Sancho chastised his own flesh while engaged in the process of disenchanting Dulcinea del Toboso. At the same time, with that cunning which was natural to him, Jack took care to let the scholars know that his name was not to be mentioned in the transaction; and that, if they were asked any questions, they must be prepared to say, nay, to swear, for that matter, that they objected to John's usher from no personal dislike to the man himself, and without having received fee or reward, in the shape of apples, lollypops, gingerbread, barley-sugar, or sweetmeats whatever—or sixpences, groats, pence, halfpence, or other current coin of the realm.

It will be readily imagined that this oration of Jack, pronounced as it was with some of his old unction, and accompanied with that miraculous and subtle twist of the tongue which we have described in a former chapter,⁴⁷ produced exactly the effect upon his audience which might be expected. The boys were delighted—tossed up their caps—gave Jack three cheers, and told him if he stood by them they would stand by him, and that they were much mistaken if they did not contrive to make the schoolhouse too hot for any usher whom Squire Bull might think fit to send them.

It happened not long after, as Jack had anticipated, that one morning a young man called upon with a letter from the Squire, intimating that he had named him to the vacant ushership; and requesting Jack to examine into his qualifications as usual. Jack begged him to be seated, and (having privately sent a message to the schoolboys) continued to entertain him with enquiries as to John's health and the state of the weather, till he heard, by the noise in the court, that the boys had arrived. In they marched accordingly, armed with horn-books, primers, slates, rulers, Gunter's-scales, and copy-books, taking up their station near the writing-desk. The young usher-elect, though he thought this a whimsical exhibition, supposed that the urchins had been brought there only to do honour to his examination, and accordingly begged Jack, as he was in a hurry, to proceed. "Fair and softly, young man," said Jack, in his blandest tones; "we must first see what these intelligent young gentlemen have got to say to that. Tom, my fine fellow, here is a gentleman sent by Squire Bull to be your usher. What do you say to him?" "I don't like him," said Tom. "May I venture to ask why?" said the usher, putting in a word. "Don't like him," repeated Tom. "Don't like him neither," said Dick. "And no mistake," added Peter, with a grin, which immediately circulated round the school. "It is quite impossible," said Jack, "under existing circumstances, that the matter can proceed any further; it is plain the school can never be edified by such an usher. But, stop, that there may be no misconception on the subject. Here you, Smith—do you really mean to say, on soul and conscience, you don't think this respectable gentleman can do you any good?" Of course, Smith stated that his mind was quite made up on the subject. "Come here, Jenkins," said Jack, beckoning to another boy; "tell the truth now—honour bright, remember. Has any body given or promised you any apples, parliament, or other sweetmeat unknown, to induce you to vote against the usher?" Jenkins, who had just wiped his lips of the last remains of a gingerbread cake, which somehow or other had dropped into his pocket by accident, protested, on his honour, that he was quite above such a thing, and was, in fact, actuated purely by a conscientious zeal for the cause of flogging all over the world. "The scruples of these intelligent and ingenuous youths," said John, turning to the usher, "must, in conscience, receive effect; the law, as laid down in my copy of Squire Bull's own contract, is this—'That noe ushere be yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys in schoole-roome assembled.' So, with your permission, we will adjourn the consideration of the case till the Greek Calends, or latter Lammas, if that be more convenient." And, so saying, he left John's letter lying on the table, and shut the schoolroom door in the face of the astonished usher.

Squire Bull, as may be imagined, was not a little astonished and mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected, and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted upon his brain—generating therein strange conceits and dangerous hallucinations—than to any settled intention on Jack's part to pick a quarrel with him or evade performance of the conditions of their indenture, so long as he was not under the influence of hypochondria. And having this notion as to Jack's motives, and knowing nothing of the private confab at the village lawyer's, he could not help believing that, by a brisk course of purgatives and an antiphlogistic treatment—and without resorting to a strait-waistcoat, which many who knew Jack's pranks at once recommended him to adopt—he might be cured of those acrid and intoxicating vapours, which, ascending into the brain, led him into such extravagant vagaries. "I'faith," said the Squire, "since the poor man has taken this mad fancy into his head as to the terms of his bargain, the best way to restore him to his senses is to bring the matter, as he himself seemed to desire it, before the Justices of the Peace at once: 'Tis a hundred to one but he will have come to his senses long before they have come to a decision; at all events, unless he is madder than I take him to be, when he finds how plain the terms of the indenture are, he will surely submit with a good grace.'"

So thought the Squire; and, accordingly, by his direction, the usher-elect brought his case before the Justices at their next sittings, who forthwith summoned Jack before them to know why he refused performance of his contract with the Squire. Jack came on the day appointed, attended by the attorney—though for that matter he might have safely left him behind, being fully as much master of all equivocation or chicanery as if he had never handled anything but quills and quirks from his youth upward. This, indeed, was probably the effect of his old training in Peter's family, for whose hairsplitting distinctions and Jesuistical casuistries, notwithstanding his dislike to the man himself, he had a certain admiration, founded on a secret affinity of nature. Indeed it was wonderful to observe how, with all Jack's hatred to Peter, real or pretended, he took after him in so many points—insomuch that at times, their look, voice, manner, and way of thinking, were so closely alike, that those who knew them best might very well have mistaken them for each other. The usher having produced the Squire's copy of the indenture, pointed out the clause by which Jack became bound to examine and admit to the schools on North Farm any qualified usher whom the Squire might send—as the condition on which he was to retain his right to the tabernacle and his own mansion upon the Farm—at the same time showing Jack's seal and signature at the bottom of the deed. Jack, being called upon by the justices to show cause, pulled out of his pocket an old memorandum-book—very greasy, musty, and ill-flavoured—and which, from the quantity of dust and cobwebs with which it was overlaid, had obviously been lying on the shelf for half a century at least. This he placed in the hands of his friend Snacks the attorney, pointing out to him a page or two which he had marked with his thumb nail, as appropriate to the matter in hand. And there, to be sure, was to be found, among a quantity of other nostrums, recipes, cooking receipts, prescriptions, and omnium-gatherums of all kinds, an entry to this effect:—"That no ushere be yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys in schoole-roome assembled." Whereupon the attorney maintained, that, as this memorandum-book of Jack's was plainly of older date than the indenture, and had evidently been seen by the Squire at or prior to the time of signing, as appeared from some of the entries which it contained being incorporated in the deed, it must be presumed, that its whole contents, though not to be found in the indenture per expressum, or totidem verbis, were yet included therein implicitly, or in a latent form, inasmuch as they were not per expressum excluded therefrom;—this being, as you will recollect, precisely the argument which Jack had borrowed from Peter, when the latter construed their father's will in the question as to the lawfulness of their wearing shoulder-knots; and very much of the same kind with that celebrated thesis which Peter afterwards maintained in the matter of the brown loaf. And though he was obliged to admit (what indeed from the very look of the book he could not well dispute) that no such rule had ever been known or acted upon—and on the contrary that Jack, until this last occasion, had always admitted the Squire's ushers without objection whatsoever; yet he contended vehemently, that now that his conscience was awakened on the subject, the past must be laid out of view; and that the old memorandum-book, as part and parcel of the indenture itself, must receive effect; and farther, that whether he, Jack, was right or wrong in this matter, the Justices had no right to interfere with them.

But the Justices, on looking into this antiquated document, found that, besides this notandum, the memorandum-book contained a number of other entries of a very extraordinary kind—such, for instance, as that Martin was no better than he should be, and ought to be put down speedily: that Squire Bull had no more right to nominate ushers than he had to be Khan of Tartary: that that right belonged exclusively to Jack himself, or to the schoolboys under Jack's control and direction: that Jack was to have the sole right of laying down rules for his own government, and of enforcing them against himself by the necessary compulsitors, if the case should arise; thus, that Jack should have full powers to censure, fine, punish, flog, flay, banish, imprison, or set himself in the stocks as often as he should think fit; but that whether Jack did right or wrong, in any given case, Jack was himself to be the sole judge, and neither Squire Bull nor any of his Justices of the Peace was to have one word to say to him or his proceedings in the matter: on the contrary, that any such interference on their part, was to be regarded as a high grievance and misdemeanour on their part, for which Jack was to be entitled at the least to read them a lecture from the writing-desk, and shut the schoolroom door in their own or their children's face.

There were many other whimsical and extravagant things contained in this private note-book, so much so, that it was evident no man in his senses could ever have intended to make them part of his bargain with Jack. But the matter was put beyond a doubt by the usher producing the original draft of the indenture, on which some of these crotchets, including this fancy about the right of the schoolboys to reject the usher if they did not like him, had been interlined in Jack's hand: but all of which the Squire, on revising the deed, had scored out with his own pen, adding in the margin, opposite to the very passage, the words, in italics—"See him damned first.—J.B." And as it could not be disputed that Jack and the Squire ultimately subscribed the deed, omitting all this nonsense—the Justices had no hesitation in holding, that Jack's private memorandum-book, even if he had always carried it in his breeches pocket, and quoted it on all occasions, instead of leaving it—as it was plain he had done—for many a long year, in some forgotten corner of his trunk or lumber-room, could no more affect the construction of the indenture between himself and Squire, or afford him any defence against performance of his part of that indenture, than if he had founded on the statutes of Prester John, on the laws of Hum-Bug, Fee-Faw-Fum, or any other Emperor of China for the time being. And so, after hearing very deliberately all that the attorney for Jack had to say to the contrary, they decided that Jack must forthwith proceed to examine the usher, and give him possession, if qualified, of the schoolhouse and other appurtenances; or else make up his mind to a thundering action of damages if he did not.

The Justices thought that Jack, on hearing the case fairly stated, and their opinion given against him, with a long string of cases in point, would yield, and give the usher possession in the usual way; but no: no sooner was the sentence written out than Jack entered an appeal to the Quarter-sessions. There the whole matter was heard over again, at great length, before a full bench; but after Jack and his attorney had spoken till they were tired, the Quarter-sessions, without a moment's hesitation, confirmed the sentence of the Justices, with costs.

Jack, who had blustered exceedingly as to his chances of bamboozling the Quarter-sessions, and quashing the sentence of the Justices, looked certainly not a little discomfited at the result of his appeal. For some days after, he was observed to walk about looking gloomy and disheartened, and was heard to say to some of his family, that he began to think matters had really gone too far between him and his good friend the Squire, to whom he owed his bread; that, on second thoughts, he would give up the point about intruding ushers on the schools, and see whether the Squire might not be prevailed on to arrange matters on an amicable footing; and that he would take an opportunity, the next time he had an assembly at his house, of consulting his friends on the subject. And had Jack stuck to this resolution, there is little doubt that, by some device or other, he would have gained all he wanted; for the Squire, being an easy, good-natured man, and wishing really to do his duty in the matter of the ushership, would probably, if Jack had yielded in this instance with a good grace, have probably allowed him in the end to have things very much his own way. But to the surprise of everybody, the next time Jack had a party of friends with him, he rose up, and putting on that peculiarly sanctimonious expression which his countenance generally assumed when he had a mind to confuse and mystify his auditors by a string of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations, made a long, unintelligible, and inconsistent harangue, the drift of which no one could well understand, except that it bore that "both the Justices and the Quarter-sessions were a set of ignoramuses who could not understand a word of Jack's contract, and knew nothing of black-letter whatever; but that, nevertheless, as they had decided against him, he, as a loyal subject, must and would submit;—not, however, that he had the least idea of taking the Squire's usher, or any other usher whatsoever, on trials, contrary to the schoolboys' wishes; that, he begged to say, he would never hear of:—still he would obey the law by laying no claim himself to the usher's salary, nor interfering with the usher's drawing it; and yet that he could not exactly answer for others not doing so;"—Jack knowing all the time, that, claim as he might, he himself had no more right to the salary than to the throne of the Celestial Empire; while, on the other hand, by locking up the schoolroom, and keeping the key in his pocket, he had rendered it impossible for the poor wight of an usher to recover one penny of it—the legal condition of his doing so being his actual possession of the schoolhouse itself, of which Jack, by this last manœuvre, had contrived to deprive him. But, as if to finish the matter, and to prove the knavish spirit in which this protestation was made, he instantly got a private friend and relative of his own, with whom the whole scheme had been arranged beforehand, to come forward and bring an action on the case, in which the latter claimed the whole fund which would have belonged to the unlucky usher—in terms, as he said, of some old arrangement made by the Squire's predecessor as to school-salaries during vacancy; to be applied, as the writ very coolly stated it, "for behoof of Jack's destitute widow, in the event of his decease, and of his numerous and indigent family."

Many of Jack's own family, who were present on this occasion, remonstrated with him on the subject, foreseeing that if he went on as he had begun and threatened to proceed, he must soon come to a rupture with the Squire, which could end in nothing else than his being turned out of house and hall, and thrown adrift upon the wide world, without a penny in his pocket. But the majority—who were puffed up with more than Jack's own madness and had a notion that by sheer boldness and bullying on their part, the Squire would, after a time, be sure to give way, encouraged Jack to go on at all hazards, and not to retract a hair's breadth in his demands. And Jack, who had now become mischievously crazed on the subject, and began to be as arrogant and conceited of his own power and authority, as ever my Lord Peter had been in his proudest and most pestilential days, was not slow to follow their advice.

'Twas of no consequence that a friend of the Squire's, who had known Jack long, and had really a great kindness towards him, tried to bring about an arrangement between him and the Squire upon very handsome terms. He had a meeting with Jack;—at which he talked the matter over in a friendly way—telling him that though the Squire must reserve in his own hands the nomination of his own ushers, he had always been perfectly willing to listen to reason in any objections that might be taken to them; only some reason he must have, were it only that Jack could not abide the sight of a red-nosed usher:—let that reason, such as it was, be put on paper, and he would consider of it; and if, from any peculiar idiosyncracy in Jack's temperament and constitution, he found that his antipathy to red noses was unsuperable, probably he would not insist on filling up the vacancy with a nose of that colour. Jack, who was always more rational when alone than when he had got the attorney and the more frantic members of his family at his elbow, acknowledged, as he well might, that all this seemed very reasonable; and that he really thought that on these terms the Squire and he would have little difficulty in coming to an agreement. So they parted, leaving the Squire's friend under the impression that all was right, and that he had only to get an agreement to that effect drawn out, signed and sealed by the parties.

Next morning, however, he received a letter by the penny-post, written no doubt in Jack's hand, but obviously dictated by the attorney, in these terms:—

The moment the Squire's friend perused this missive, he saw plainly that all hope of bringing Jack to his senses was at an end; and that under the advice of evil counsellors, lunatic friends, and lewd fellows of the baser sort, Jack would shortly bring himself and his family to utter ruin.

And now, as might be expected, Jack's disorder, which had hitherto been comparatively of the calm and melancholy kind, broke out into the most violent and phrenetic exhibitions. He sometimes raved incoherently, for hours together, against the Squire; often, in the midst of his speeches, he was assailed with epileptic fits, during which he displayed the strangest contortions and most laughable gestures; he threw entirely aside the decent coat he had worn for some time back, and habitually attired himself in the old and threadbare raiment, which he had worn after he and Martin had been so unceremoniously sent to the right-about by Lord Peter, and even ran about the streets with his band tied round his peaked beaver, bearing thereon the motto—"Nemo me impune lacessit." If his madness had only led him to make a spectacle and laughing-stock of himself, by these wild vagaries and mountebank exhibitions, all had been well, but this did not satisfy Jack; his old disposition for a riot had returned, and a riot, right or wrong, he was determined to have. So he set to work to frighten the women of the village with stories, as to the monsters whom the Squire would send among them as ushers, who would do nothing but teach their children drinking, chuck-farthing, and cock-fighting; to the schoolboys themselves, talked of the length, breadth, and thickness, of the usher's birch, which he assured them was dipped in vinegar every evening, in order to afford a more agreeable stimulus to the part affected; he plied them with halfpence and strong beer; exhorted them to insurrections and barrings-out; taught them how to mock at any usher who would not submit to be Jack's humble servant; and by gibes and scurril ballads, which he would publish in the newspapers, try to make his life a burden to him. He also instructed them how best to stick darts into his wig, cover his back with spittle, fill his pockets with crackers, burn assafœtida in the fire, extinguish the candles with fulminating powder, or blow up the writing-desk by a train of combustibles. Above all, he counselled the urchins to stand firm the next time that John sent an usher down to that quarter, and vehemently to protest for the doctrine of election as to their own usher, and reprobation as to the Squire's; assuring them, that provided they took his advice, and followed the plan which he would afterwards impart to them in confidence at the proper time, he could almost take it upon himself to say, that in a short time, no tyrannical usher, or cast-off tutor of the Squire, should venture to show his face, with or without tawse or ferule, within the boundaries of North Farm.

It was not long before an opportunity offered of putting these precious schemes in practice; for shortly afterwards, the old usher of a school on the northermost boundary of the North Farm estates having died, the ushership became vacant, and John, as usual, appointed a successor in his room. Being warned this time by what had taken place on the last occasion, the Squire took care to apply beforehand to the Justices of the Peace—got a peremptory mandamus from them, directing Jack to proceed forthwith, and, after the usual trials, to put the usher in possession of the schoolhouse by legal form, and without re-regard to any protest or interruption from any or all of the schoolboys put together. So down the usher proceeded, accompanied by a posse of constables and policemen of various divisions, till they arrived at the schoolhouse, which lay adjacent to the churchyard, and then demanded admittance. It happened that in this quarter resided some of Jack's family, who, as we have already mentioned, differed from him entirely, thinking him totally wrong in the contest with the Squire and being completely satisfied that all his glosses upon his contract were either miserable quibbles or mere hallucinations, and that it was his duty, so long as he ate John's bread, and slept under John's roof, to perform fairly the obligations he had come under:—and so, on reading the Justices' warrant, which required them, on pain of being set in the stocks, and forfeiture of two shillings and sixpence of penalty, besides costs, to give immediate possession to the Squire's usher, they at once resolved to obey, called for the key of the schoolhouse, and proceeded to the door, accompanied by the usher and the authorities, for the purpose of complying with the warrant and admitting the usher as in times past. But on arriving there, never was there witnessed such a scene of confusion. The churchyard was crowded with ragamuffins of every kind, from all the neighbouring parishes; scarcely was there a sot or deboshed fellow within the district who had not either come himself or found a substitute; gipsies, beggarwomen, and thimbleriggers were thick as blackberries; while Jack himself—who, upon hearing of what was going forward, had come down by the night coach with all expedition—was standing on a tombstone near the doorway, and holding forth to the whole bevy of rascals whom he had assembled about him. It was evident from his tones and gestures that Jack had been exciting the mob in every possible way; but as the justices and the constables drew near, he changed the form of his countenance, pulled a psalm-book out of his pocket, and, with much sanctity and appearance of calmness, gave out the tune; in which the miscellaneous assemblage around him joined, with similar unction and devotion. When the procession reached the door, they found the whole inside of the schoolhouse already packed with urchins and blackguards of all kinds, who, having previously gained admission by the window, had forcibly barricaded the door against the constables, being assisted in the defence thereof by the mob without, who formed a double line, and kept hustling the poor usher and the constables from side to side, helping themselves to a purse or two in passing, and calling out at the same time, "take care of pickpockets"—occasionally amusing themselves also by playfully smashing the beaver of some of the justices of the peace over their face, to the tune of "all round my hat," sung in chorus, on the Mainzerian system, amidst peals of laughter.

Meantime Jack was skipping up and down upon the tombstone, calling out to his myrmidons—"Good friends! Sweet friends! Let me not stir your spirits up to mutiny. Though that cairn of granite stones lies very handy and inviting, I pray you refrain from it. Touch it not. I humbly entreat my friend with the dirty shirt not to break the sconce of the respectable gentleman whom I have in my eye, with that shillelah of his—though I must admit that he is labouring under strong and just provocation." "For mercy's sake, my dear sir!" he would exclaim to a third—"don't push my respected friend the justice into yonder puddle—the one which lies so convenient on your right hand there; though, to be sure, the ground is slippery, and the thing might happen, in a manner without any one's being able to prevent it." And so on he went, taking care to say nothing for which the justices could afterwards venture to commit him to Bridewell; but, in truth, stirring up the rabble to the utmost, by nods, looks, winks, and covert speeches, intended to convey exactly the opposite meaning from what the words bore.

At last by main force, and after a hard scuffle, the constables contrived to force the schoolhouse door open, and so to make way for the justices, the usher, and those of Jack's family who, as we have seen already, had made up their minds to give the usher possession, to enter. But having entered, the confusion and bedevilment was ten times worse than even in the churchyard itself. The benches were lined with a pack of overgrown rascals in corduroy vestments, and with leather at the knees, from all the neighbouring villages; in a gallery at one end sat a Scotch bagpiper, flanked by a blind fiddler, and an itinerant performer on the hurdygurdy, accompanied by his monkey—who in the course of his circuit through the village, had that morning received a special retainer, in the shape of half a quartern of gin, for the occasion; while in the usher's chair were ensconced two urchins of about fourteen years of age, smoking tobacco, playing at all fours, and drinking purl, with their legs diffused in a picturesque attitude along the writing-desk. One of the justices tried to command silence—till the Squire's commission to the usher should be read; but no sooner had he opened his mouth than the whole multitude burst forth as if the confusion of tongues had taken place for the first time; twenty spoke together, ten whistled, as many more sang psalms and obscene songs alternately; the bagpiper droned his worst; the fiddler uttered notes that made the hair of those who heard them stand on end; while the hurdygurdy man did his utmost to grind down both his companions, in which task he was ably assisted by the grinning and chattering of the honourable and four-footed gentleman on his left. Meantime stones, tiles, and rafters, pewter pint-pots, fragments of slates, rulers, and desks, were circulating through the schoolhouse in all directions, in the most agreeable confusion.

One of the justices tried to speak, but even from the first it was all dumb show; and scarcely had he proceeded through two sentences, when his oration was extinguished as suddenly and by the same means as the conflagration of the Royal Palace at Lilliput. After many attempts to obtain a hearing, it became obvious that all chance of doing so in the schoolhouse was at an end; and so the usher, the justices, and the rest, adjourned to the next ale-house, where they had the usher's commission quietly read over in presence of the landlord and the waiter, and handed him over the keys of the house before the same witnesses; of all which, and of their previous deforcement by a mob of rapscallions, they took care to have an instrument regularly drawn out by a notary-public. Thereafter they ordered a rump and dozen, being confident that as the day was bitterly cold, and the snow some feet deep upon the ground, the courage of the rioters would be cooled before they had finished dinner; and so it was, for towards evening, the temperature having descended considerably beneath the freezing point, the mob, who had now exhausted their beer and gin, and who saw that there was no more fun to be expected for the day, began to disperse each man to his home, so that before nightfall the coast was clear; on which the justices, with the posse comitatus, escorted the usher to the schoolhouse, opened the door, put him formally in possession, and, wishing him much good of his new appointment, departed.

But how did Jack, you will ask, bear this rebuff on the part of his own kin? Why, very ill indeed; in truth, he became furious, and seemed to have lost all natural feelings towards his own flesh and blood. He summoned such of his family as had given admission to the usher before him, called a sort of court-martial of the rest of his relations to enquire into their conduct; and, notwithstanding the accused protested that they had the highest respect and regard for Jack, were his humble servants to command in all ordinary matters, and only acted in this instance in obedience to the justices' warrant, (the which, if they had disobeyed, they were certain to have been at that moment cooling their heels in the stocks,) Jack, who was probably worked up to a kind of frenzy by his more violent of his inmates, kicked them out of the room, and sent a set of his myrmidons after them, with instructions to tear their coats off their backs, strip them of their wigs and small-clothes, and turn them into the street. Against this the unlucky wights appealed to the justices for protection, who, to be sure, sent down some policemen, who beat off the mob, and enabled them to make their doors fast against Jack and his emissaries. But beyond that they could give them little assistance; for though Jack and his abettors could not actually venture upon a trespass by forcing their way within doors, they contrived to render the very existence of all who were not of their way of thinking miserable. If it was an usher who, in spite of all their efforts to exclude him, had fairly got admittance into the schoolhouse, they set up a sentry-box at his very door, in which a rival usher held forth on Cocker and the alphabet; they drew off a few stray boys from the village school, and this detachment, recruited and reinforced by all the idlers of the neighbourhood, to whom mischief was sport, was studiously instructed to keep up a perpetual whistling, hooting, howling, hissing, and imitations of the crowing of a cock, so as to render it impossible for the usher and boys within the school to hear or profit by one word that was said. If the scholars within were told to say A, the blackguards without were bellowing B; or if the usher asked how many three times three made, the answer from the outside would be "ten," or else that "it depended upon circumstances." Every week some ribald and libellous paragraph would appear in the county newspaper, headed "Advertisement," in such terms as the following:—"We have just learned from the best authority, that the usher of a school not a hundred miles off from Hogs-Norton, has lately been detected in various acts of forgery, petty larceny, sedition, high treason, burglary, &c. &c. If this report be not officially contradicted by the said usher within a fortnight, by advertisement, duly inserted and paid for in this newspaper, we shall hold the same to be true." Or sometimes more mysteriously thus:—"Delicacy forbids us to allude to the shocking reports which are current respecting the usher of Mullaglass. Christian charity would lead us to hope they were unfounded, but Christian verity compels us to state that we believe every word of them." And though Jack and his editor sometimes overshot their mark, and got soused in damages at the instance of those whom they had libelled, yet Jack, who found that it answered his ends, persevered, and so kept the whole neighbourhood in hot water.

You would not believe me were I to tell you of half the tyrannical and preposterous pranks which he performed about this period; but some of them I can't help noticing. He had picked up some subscriptions, for instance, from charitable folks in the neighbourhood, to build a school upon a remote corner of North Farm, where not a single boy had learned his alphabet within the memory of man; and what, think ye, does he do with the money, but insists on clapping down the new school exactly opposite the old school in the village, merely to spite the poor usher, against whom he had taken a dislike—though there was no more need to build a school there than to ship a cargo of coals for Newcastle. Again, having ascertained that one of his servants had been seen shaking hands with some of Jack's family with whom he had quarrelled as above mentioned, he refused to give him a character, though the poor fellow was only thinking of taking service somewhere in the plantations.

Notwithstanding all Jack's efforts, however, it sometimes happened that when an usher was appointed he could not get up a sufficient cabal against him, and that even the schoolboys, knowing something of the man before, had no objection to him. In such cases Jack resorted to various schemes in order to cast the candidate upon his examinations. Sometimes he would shut him up in a small closet, telling him he must answer a hundred and fifty questions, in plane and spherical trigonometry, within as many minutes, and that he would be allowed the assistance of Johnson's Dictionary, and the Gradus ad Parnassum, for the purpose. At other tines he would ask the candidate, with a bland smile, what was his opinion of things in general, and of the dispute between him (Jack) and the Squire in particular; and if that question was not answered to his satisfaction, he remitted him to his studies. When no objection could be made to the man's parts, Jack would say that he had scruples of conscience, because he doubted whether his commission had been fairly come by, or whether he had not bribed the Squire by a five-pound note to obtain it. At last he did not even take the trouble of going through this farce, but would at once, if he disliked the look of the man's face, tell him he was busy at the moment;—that he might lay the Squire's letter on the table, and call again that day six months for an answer. He no longer pretended, in fact, to any fairness or justice in his dealings; for though those who sided with him might be guilty of all the offences in the calendar, Jack continued to wink so hard, and shut his ears so close, as not to see or hear of them; while as to the unhappy wights who differed from him, he had the eyes of Argus and the ear of Dionysius, and the tender mercies of a Spanish inquisitor, discovering scandalum magnatum and high treason in ballads which they had written twenty years before, and in which Jack, though he received a presentation copy at the time, had never pretended, up to that moment, to detect the least harm.

The last of these freaks which I shall here mention took place on this wise. Jack had never been accustomed to invite any one to his assemblies but the ushers who had been appointed by the Squire, and it was always understood that they alone had a vote in all vestry matters. But when John quarrelled with his family, as above mentioned, and a large part of the oldest and most respectable of his relatives drew off from him, it occurred to Jack that he could bring in a set of new auxiliaries, upon whose vote he could count in all his family squabbles, or his deputes, with Squire Bull; and the following was the device he fell upon for that end.

Here and there upon North Farm, where the village schools were crowded, little temporary schoolhouses had been run up, where one or two of the monitors were accustomed to teach such of the children as could not be accommodated in the larger school. But these assistants had always been a little looked down upon, and had never been allowed a seat at Jack's board. Now, however, he began to change his tone towards them, and to court and flatter them on all occasions. One fine morning he suddenly made his appearance on the village green, followed by some of his hangers on, bearing a theodolite, chains, measuring rods, sextants, compasses, and other instruments of land-surveying. Jack set up his theodolite, took his observations, began noting measurements, and laying down the bases of triangles in all directions, then, having summed up his calculations with much gravity, gave directions to those about him to line off with stakes and ropes the space which he pointed out to them, and which in fact enclosed nearly half the village. In the course of these operations, the usher, who had witnessed these mathematical proceedings of Jack from the window, but could not comprehend what the man would be at, sallied forth, and accosting Jack, asked him what he meant by these strange lines of circumvallation. "Why," answered Jack, "I have been thinking for some time past of relieving you of part of your heavy duties, and dividing the parish-school between you and your assistant; so in future you will confine yourself to the space outside the ropes, and leave all within the inclosure to him." It was in vain that the usher protested he was quite equal to the duty; that the boys liked him, and disliked his assistant; that if the village was thus divided, the assistant would be put upon a level with him, and have a vote in the vestry, to which he had no more right than to a seat in the House of Commons. Jack was not to be moved from his purpose, but gave orders to have a similar apportionment made in most of the neighbouring villages, and then inviting the assistants to a party at his house, he had them sworn in as vestrymen, telling them, that in future they had the same right to a seat at his board as the best of John's ushers had. Here again, however, he found he had run his head against a wall, and that he was not the mighty personage he took himself for; for, on a complaint to the justices of the peace, a dozen special constables were sent down, who tore up the posts, removed the ropes, and demolished all Jack's inclosures in a trice.

These frequent defeats rendered Jack nearly frantic. He now began to quarrel even with his best friends, not a few of whom, though they had gone with him a certain length, now left his house, and told him plainly they would never set foot in it again. He burst forth into loud invectives against Martin, who had always been a good friend to his penny subscriptions, and more than once had come to his assistance when Jack was hard pressed by Hugh, a dissenting schoolmaster, between whom and Jack there had long been a bloody feud. Jack now denounced Martin in set terms; accused him of being in the pay of Peter, with whom he said he had been holding secret conferences of late at the Cross-Keys; and of setting the Squire's mind against him (Jack)—whereas poor Martin, till provoked by Jack's abuse to defend himself, had never said an unkind word against him. Finding, however, that, with all his efforts, he did not make much way with the men, Jack directed his battery chiefly against the women, who were easily caught by his sanctimonious air, and knowing nothing earthly of the subject, took for gospel all that Jack chose to tell them. He held love-feasts in his house up to a late hour, at which he generally harangued on the subject of the persecutions which he endured. He vowed the justices were all in a conspiracy against him; that they were constantly intruding into his grounds, notwithstanding his warnings that spring-guns were set in the premises; that on one occasion a tall fellow of a sheriff's officer had made his way into his house and served him with a writ of fieri facias even in the midst of one of his assemblies, a disgrace he never could get over; that he could not walk ten yards in any direction, or saunter for an instant at the corner of a street, without being ordered by a policeman to move on; in short, that he lived in perpetual terror and anxiety—and all this because he had done his best to save them and their children from the awful scourge of deboshed and despotical ushers. At the conclusion of these meetings he invariably handed round his hat, into which the silly women dropped a good many shillings, which Jack assured them would be applied for the public benefit, meaning thereby his own private advantage.

Jack, however, with all his craze, was too knowing not to see that the women, beyond advancing him a few shillings at a time, would do little for his cause so far as any terms with Squire Bull was concerned; so, with the view of making a last attack upon the Squire, and driving him into terms, he began to look about for assistance among those with whom he had previously been at loggerheads. It cost him some qualms before he could so far abase his stomach as to do so; but at last he ventured to address a long and pitiful letter to Hugh, in which he set forth all his disputes with John, and dwelt much on his scruples of conscience; begged him to forget old quarrels, and put down his name to a Round Robin, which he was about to address to the Squire in his own behalf. To this epistle Hugh answered as follows:—"Dearly beloved,—my bowels are grieved for your condition, but I see only one cure for your scruples of conscience. Strip off the Squire's livery, and give up your place, as I did, and your peace of mind will be restored to you. In the mean time, I do not see very well why I should help you to pocket the Squire's wages, and do nothing for it. Yours, in the spirit of meekness and forgiveness—HUGH." After this rebuff, Jack, you may easily believe, saw there was little hope of assistance from that quarter.

As a last resource, he called a general meeting of his friends, at which it was resolved to present the proposed Round Robin to John, signed by as many names as they could muster; in which Jack, who seemed to be of opinion that the more they asked the greater was their chance of getting something at least, set forth the articles he wanted, and without which, he told John, he could no longer remain in his house; but that he and his relatives and friends would forthwith, if this petition was rejected, walk out, to the infinite scandal of the neighbourhood, leaving the Squire without a teacher or a writing-master within fifty miles to supply their place. They demanded that the Squire should give up the nomination of the ushers entirely, though in whose favour they did not explain; and that Jack was in future to be a law unto himself, and to be supreme in all matters of education, with power to himself to define in what such matters consisted. On these requests being conceded, they stated that they would continue to give their countenance to the Squire as in times past; otherwise the whole party must quit possession incontinently. Jack prevailed on a good many to sign this document—though some did not like the idea of walking out, demurred, and added after the word incontinently, "i.e. when convenient,"—and thus signed, they put the Round Robin under a twopenny cover, and dispatched it to "John Bull, Esquire"—with haste.

If they really thought the Squire was to be bullied into these terms by this last sally, they found themselves consumedly mistaken; for after a time down came a long and perfectly civil letter from the Squire's secretary, telling them their demands were totally out of the question, and that the Squire would see them at the antipodes sooner than comply with them.

Did Jack then, you will ask, walk out as he had threatened, when he got the Squire's answer? Not he. He now gave notice that he intended to apply for an Act of Parliament on the subject: and that, in the meantime, the matter might stand over. Meantime, and in case matters should come to the worst, he is busily engaged begging all over the country, for cash to erect a new wooden tenement for him, in the event of his having to leave his old one of stone and lime. Some say even that he has been seen laying down several pounds of gunpowder in the cellar of his present house, and has been heard to boast of his intention to blow up his successor when he takes possession; but for my own part, and seeing how he has shuffled hitherto, I believe that he is no nearer removing than he was a year ago. Indeed he has said confidentially to several people, that even if his new house were all ready for him, he could not, with his asthmatic tendency, think of entering it for a twelvemonth or so, till the lath and plaster should be properly seasoned. Of all this, however, we shall hear more anon.

PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS.

BY A COCKNEY.

When any one thinks of French literature, there immediately rises before him a horrid phantasmagoria of repulsive objects—murders, incests, parricides, and every imaginable shape of crime that horror e'er conceived or fancy feigned. He sees the whole efforts of a press, brimful of power and talent, directed against every thing that has hitherto been thought necessary to the safety of society, or the happiness of domestic life—marriage deliberately written down, and proved to be the cause of all the miseries of the social state: and strange to say, in the crusade against matrimony, the sharpest swords and strongest lances are wielded by women. Those women are received into society—men's wives and daughters associate with them—and their books are noticed in the public journals without any allusions to the Association for the prevention of vice, but rather with the praises which, in other times and countries, would have been bestowed on works of genius and virtue. The taste of the English public has certainly deteriorated within the last few years; and popularity, the surest index of the public's likings, though not of the writer's deservings, has attended works of which the great staple has been crime and blackguardism. A certain rude power, a sort of unhealthy energy, has enabled the writer to throw an interest round pickpockets and murderers; and if this interest were legitimately produced, by the exhibition of human passions modified by the circumstances of the actor—if it arose from the development of one real, living, thinking, doing, and suffering man's heart, we could only wonder at the author's choice of such a subject, but we should be ready to acknowledge that he had widened our sphere of knowledge—and made us feel, as we all do, without taking the same credit for it to ourselves that the old blockhead in France does, that being human, we have sympathies with all, even the lowest and wickedest of our kind. But the interest those works excite arises from no such legitimate source—not from the development of our common nature, but from the creation of a new one—from startling contrasts, not of two characters but of one—tenderness, generosity in one page; fierceness and murder in the next. But though our English tastes are so far deteriorated as to tolerate, or even to admire, the records of cruelty and sin now proceeding every day from the press—our English morals would recoil with horror from the deliberate wickedness which forms the great attraction of the French modern school of romance. The very subjects chosen for their novels, by the most popular of their female writers, shows a state of feeling in the authors more dreadful to contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones descriptions of our chroniclers of Newgate. A married woman, the heroine—high in rank, splendid in intellect, radiant in beauty—has for the hero a villain escaped from the hulks. There is no record of his crimes—we are not called upon to follow him in his depredations, or see him cut throats in the scientific fashion of some of our indigenous rascals. He is the philosopher,—the instructor—the guide. The object of his introduction is to show the iniquity of human laws—the object of her introduction is to show the absurdity of the institution of marriage. This would never be tolerated in England. Again, a married woman is presented to us—for the sympathy which with us attends a young couple to the church-door, only begins in France after they have left it: as a child she has been betrothed to a person of her own rank—at five or six incurable idiocy takes possession of her proposed husband—but when she is eighteen the marriage takes place—the husband is a mere child still; for his intellect has continued stationary though his body has reached maturity—a more revolting picture was never presented than that of the condition of the idiot's wife—her horror of her husband—and of course her passion for another. The most interesting scenes between the lovers are constantly interrupted by the hideous representative of matrimony, the grinning husband, who rears his slavering countenance from behind the sofa, and impresses his unfortunate wife with a sacred awe for the holy obligations of marriage.

Again, a dandy of fifty is presented to us, whose affection for his ward has waited, of course, till she is wedded to another, to ripen into love. He still continues her protector against the advances of others; for jealousy is a good point of character in every one but the husband, and there it is only ridiculous. The husband in this case is another admirable specimen of the results of wedlock for life—he is a chattering, shallow pretender—a political economist, prodigiously dull and infinitely conceited—an exaggerated type of the Hume-Bowring statesman—and, as is naturally to be expected, our sympathies are awakened for the wretched wife, and we rejoice to see that her beauty and talents, her fine mind and pure ideas, are appreciated by a dashing young fellow, who outwits our original friend the dandy of fifty and the philosophical deputé; the whole leaving a pleasing impression on the reader's mind from the conviction that the heroine is no longer neglected.

From the similarity of these stories—and they are only taken at random from a great number—it will be seen that the spirit of almost all of them is the same. But when we go lower in the scale, and leave the class of philosophic novels, we find their tales of life and manners still more absurd in their total untrueness than the others were hateful in their design. There is a novel just now appearing in one of the most widely-circulated of the Parisian papers, so grotesquely overdone, that if it had been meant for a caricature of the worst parts of our own hulk-and-gallows authors, it would have been very much admired; but meant to be serious, powerful, harrowing, and all the rest of it, it is a most curious exhibition of a nation's taste and a writer's audacity. The Mysteries of Paris, by Eugene Sue, has been dragging its slow length along for a long time, and gives no sign of getting nearer its denouement than when it began. A sovereign prince is the hero—his own daughter, whom he has disowned, the heroine; and the tale commences by his fighting a man on the street, and taking a fancy to his unknown child, who is the inhabitant of one of the lowest dens in the St Giles' of Paris! The other dramatis personæ are convicts, receivers of stolen goods, murderers, intriguers of all ranks—the aforesaid prince, sometimes in the disguise of a workman, sometimes of a pickpocket, acting the part of a providence among them, rewarding the good and punishing the guilty. The English personages are the Countess Sarah McGregor—the lawful wife of the prince—her brother Tom, and Sir Walter Murph, Esquire. These are all jostled, and crowded, and pushed, and flurried—first in flash kens, where the language is slang; then in country farms, and then in halls and palaces—and so intermixed and confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds. How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step. Horror seems the great ingredient in the present literary fare of France, and in the Mystères de Paris the most confirmed glutton of such delicacies may sup full of them. In the midst of such depraved and revolting exhibitions, it is a sort of satisfaction, though not of the loftiest kind, to turn to the coarse fun and ludicrous descriptions of Paul de Kock. And, after all, our friend Paul has not many more sins than coarseness and buffoonery to answer for. As to his attempting, of set purpose, to corrupt people's morals, it never entered into his head. He does not know what morals are; they never form any part of his idea of manners or character. If a good man comes in his way, he looks at him with a strange kind of unacquaintance that almost rises into respect; but he is certainly more affectionate, and on far better terms, with men about town—amative hairdressers, flirting grisettes, and the whole genus, male and female, of the epiciers. It would no doubt be an improvement if the facetious Paul could believe in the existence of an honest woman; but such women as come in his way he describes to the life. A ball in a dancing-master's private room up six pairs of stairs, a pic-nic to one of the suburbs, a dinner at a restaurateur's, or a family consultation on a proposal of marriage, are far more in Paul's way than tales of open horror or silk-and-satin depravity. One is only sorry, in the midst of so much gaiety and good-humour, to stumble on some scene or sentiment that gives on the inclination to throw the book in the fire, or start, like Cæsar, on the top of the diligence to pull the author's ears. But the next page sets all right again; and you go on laughing at the disasters of my neighbour Raymond, or admiring the graces or Chesterfieldian politeness of M. Bellequeue. French nature seems essentially different from all the other natures hitherto known; and yet, though so new, there never rises any doubt that it is a nature, a reality, as Thomas Carlyle says, and not a sham. The personages presented to us by Paul de Kock can scarcely, in the strict sense of the word, be called human beings; but they are French beings of real flesh and blood, speaking and thinking French in the most decided possible manner, and at intervals possessed of feelings which make us inclined to include them in the great genus homo, though with so many inseparable accidents, that it is impossible for a moment to shut one's eyes to the species to which they belong. But such as they are in their shops, and back-parlours, and ball-rooms, and fêtes champêtres, there they are in Paul de Kock—nothing extenuated, little set down in malice—vain, empty, frivolous, good-tempered, gallant, lively, and absurd. Let us go to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the anniversary of the marriage of M. and Madame Moutonnet on the day of St Eustache.

"At a little distance from the ball, towards the middle of the wood, a numerous party is seated on the grass, or rather on the sand; napkins are spread on the ground, and covered with plates and cold meat and fruits. The bottles are placed in the cool shade, the glasses are filled and emptied rapidly; good appetites and open air make every thing appear excellent. They make plates out of paper, and toss pieces of paté and sausage to each other. They eat, they drink, they sing, they laugh and play tricks. It seems a struggle who shall be funniest. It is well known that all things are allowable in the country; and the cits now assembled in the wood of Romainville seem fully persuaded of the fact. A jolly old governor of about fifty tries to carve a turkey, and can't succeed. A little woman, very red, very fat, and very round, hastens to seize a limb of the bird; she pulls at one side, the jolly old governor at the other—the leg separates at last, and the lady goes sprawling on the grass, while the gentleman topples over in the opposite direction with the remainder of the animal in his hand. The shouts of laughter redouble, and M. Moutonnet—such is the name of the jolly old governor—resumes his place, declaring that he will never try to carve any thing again. 'I knew you would never be able to manage it,' said a large woman bluntly, in a tone that agreed exactly with her starched and crabbed features. She was sitting opposite the stout gentleman, and had seen with indignation the alacrity with which the little lady had flown to M. Moutonnet's assistance.

"'In the twenty years we have been married,' she continued, 'have you ever carved any thing at home, sir?'

"'No, my dear, that's very true;' replied the stout gentleman in a submissive voice, and trying to smile his better half into good-humour.

"'You don't know how to help a dish of spinach, and yet you attempt a dish like that!'

"'In the country, sir, as in the town, people shouldn't try things they can't perform.'

"'You know, Madame Moutonnet, that generally I never attempt any thing—but to day'——

"'Yes, yes, this is Saint Eustache!' is repeated in chorus by the whole company, and the glasses are filled and jingled as before.

"'To yours, ladies and gentlemen,' replied M. Moutonnet graciously smiling—'and yours, my angel.'

"It is to his wife M. Moutonnet addresses himself. She tried to assume an amiable look, and condescends to approach her glass to that of M. Eustache Moutonnet. M. Eustache Moutonnet is a rich laceman of the Rue St Martin; a man highly respected in trade; no bill of his was ever protested, nor any engagement failed in. For the thirty years he has kept shop he has been steadily at work from eight in the morning till eight at night. His department is to take care of the day-book and ledger; Madame Moutonnet manages the correspondence and makes the bargains. The business of the shop and the accounts are confided to an old clerk and Mademoiselle Eugenie Moutonnet, with whom we shall presently become better acquainted.

"M. Moutonnet, as you may perhaps already have perceived, is not commander-in-chief at hone. His wife directs, rules, and governs all things. When she is in good-humour—a somewhat extraordinary occurrence—she allows her husband to go and take his little cup of coffee, provided he goes for that purpose to the coffee-house at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil—for it is famous for its liberal allowance of sugar, and M. Moutonnet always brings home three lumps of it to his wife. On Sundays they dine a little earlier, to have time for a promenade to the Tuileries or the Jardin Turk. Excursions into the country are very rare, and only on extraordinary occasions, such as the fête-day of M. and Madame Moutonnet. That regular life does not hinder the stout lace-merchant from being the happiest of men—so true is it that what is one man's poison is another man's meat. M. Moutonnet was born with simple tastes—she required to be led and managed like a child. Don't shrug your shoulders at this avowal, ye spirited gentlemen, so proud of your rights, so puffed up with your merits. You! who think yourselves always masters of your actions, you yield to your passions every day! they lead you, and sometimes lead you very ill. Well, M. Moutonnet has no fear of that—he has no passions—he knows nothing but his trade, and obedience to his spouse. He finds that a man can be very happy, though he does not know how to carve a turkey, and lets himself be governed by his wife. Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to every body else in talents and beauty. She never cared a rush about her husband, but if he was untrue to her she would tear his eyes out. Madame Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively jealous of her rights. A daughter is the sole issue of the marriage of M. Eustache Moutonnet and Mademoiselle Barbe Desormeaux. She is now eighteen years old, and at eighteen the young ladies in Paris are generally pretty far advanced. But Eugenie has been educated severely—and although possessed of a good deal of spirit, is timid, docile, submissive, and never ventures on a single observation in presence of her parents. She has cleverness, grace, and sensibility, but she is ignorant of the advantages she has received from nature—her sentiments are as yet concentrated at the bottom of her heart. She is not coquettish—or rather she scarcely ventures to give way to the inclination so natural to women, which leads them to please and to be pretty. But Eugenie has no need of those little arts, so indispensable to others, or to have recourse to her mirror every hour. She is well made, and she is beautiful; her eyes are soft and expressive, her voice is tender and agreeable, her brow is shadowed by dark locks of hair, her mouth furnished with fine white teeth. In short, she has that nameless something about her, which charms at first sight, which is not always possessed by greater beauties and more regular features. We now know all the Moutonnet family; and since we have gone so far, let us make acquaintance with the rest of the party who have come to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the Saint Eustache.

"The little woman who rushed so vigorously to the assistance of M. Moutonnet, is the wife of a tall gentleman of the name of Bernard, who is a toyman in the Rue St Denis. M. Bernard plays the amiable and the fool at the same time. He laughs and quizzes, makes jokes, and even puns; he is the wit of the party. His wife has been rather good-looking, and wishes to be so still. She squeezes in her waist till she can hardly breathe, and takes an hour to fit her shoes on—for she is determined to have a small foot. Her face is a little too red; but her eyes are very lively, and she is constantly trying to give them as mischievous an expression as she can. Madame Bernard has a great girl of fifteen, whom she dresses as if she were five, and treats occasionally to a new doll, by way of keeping her a child. By the side of Madame Bernard is seated a young man of eighteen, who is almost as timid as Eugenie, and blushes when he is spoken to, though he has stood behind a counter for six months. He is the son of a friend of M. Bernard, and his wife has undertaken to patronize him, and introduce him to good society.

"A person of about forty years of age, with one of those silly countenances which there is no mistaking at the first glance, is seated beside Eugenie. M. Dupont—such is his name—is a rich grocer of the Rue aux Ours. He wears powder and a queue, because he fancies they are becoming, and his hairdresser has told him that they are very aristocratic. His coat of sky-blue, and his jonquil-coloured waistcoat, give him still more the appearance of a simpleton, and agree admirably with the astonished expression of his gooseberry eyes. He dangles two watch-chains, that hang down his nankeen trowsers, with great satisfaction, and seems struck with admiration at the wisdom of his own remarks. He thinks himself captivating and full of wit. He has the presumption of ignorance, propped up by money. Finally, he is a bachelor, which gives him great consideration in all the families where there are marriageable daughters. M. and Madame Gerard, perfumers in the Rue St Martin, are also of the party. The perfumer enacts the gallant gay Lothario, and in his own district has the reputation of a prodigious rake, though he is ugly, and ill-made, and squints. But he fancies he overcomes all these drawbacks by covering himself with odours and perfumes—accordingly, you smell him half an hour before he comes in sight. His wife is young and pretty. She married him at fifteen, and has a boy of nine, who looks more like her brother than her son. The little Gerard hollos and jumps about, breaks the glasses and bottles, and makes as much noise as all the rest of the company put together. 'He's a little lion,' exclaims M. Gerard; 'he's exactly what I was. You never could hear yourselves speak wherever I was, at his age. People were delighted with me. My son is my perfect image.'

"M. Gerard's sister, an old maid of forty-five, who takes every opportunity of declaring that she never intends to marry, and sighs every tine M. Dupont looks at her, is next to M. Moutonnet. The old clerk of the laceman—M. Bidois—who waits for Madame Moutonnet's permission before he opens his mouth, and fills his glass every time she is not looking—is placed at the side of Mademoiselle Cecile Gerard; who, though she swears every minute that she never will marry, and that she hates the men, is very ill pleased to have old M. Bidois for her neighbour, and hints pretty audibly that Madame Bernard monopolizes all the young beaux. A young man of about twenty, tall, well-made, with handsome features, whose intelligent expression announces that he is intended for higher things than perpetually to be measuring yards of calico, is seated at the right hand of Eugenie. That young man, whose name is Adolphe, is assistant in a fashionable warehouse where Madame Moutonnet deals; and as he always gives good measure, she has asked him to the fête of St Eustache. And now we are acquainted with all the party who are celebrating the marriage-day of M. Moutonnet."

We are not going to follow Paul de Kock in the adventures of all the party so carefully described to us. Our object in translating the foregoing passage, was to enable our readers to see the manner of people who indulge in pic-nics in the wood of Romainville, desiring them to compare M. Moutonnet and his friends, with any laceman and his friends he may choose to fix upon in London. A laceman as well to do in the world as M. Moutonnet, a grocer as rich as M. Dupont, and even a perfumer as fashionable as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait dinner at Blackwall, or make up a party to the races at Epsom—and as to admitting such a humble servitor as M. Bidois to their society, or even the unfriended young mercer's assistant, M. Adolphe, they would as soon think of inviting one of the new police. Five miles from town our three friends would pass themselves off for lords, and blow-up the waiter for not making haste with their brandy and water, in the most aristocratic manner imaginable. In France, or at least in Paul de Kock, there seems no straining after appearances. The laceman continues a laceman when he is miles away from the little back shop; and even the laceman's lady has no desire to be mistaken for the wife of a squire. Madame Moutonnet seems totally unconscious of the existence of any lady whatever, superior to herself in rank or station. The Red Book is to her a sealed volume. Her envies, hatreds, friendships, rivalries, and ambitions, are all limited to her own circle. The wife of a rich laceman, on the other hand, in England, most religiously despises the wives of almost all other tradesmen; she scarcely knows in what street the shop is situated, but from the altitudes of Balham or Hampstead, looks down with supreme disdain on the toiling creatures who stand all day behind a counter. The husband, in the same way, manages to cast off every reminiscence of the shop, in the course of his three miles in the omnibus, and at six or seven o'clock you might fancy they were a duke and duchess, sitting in a gaudily furnished drawing-room, listening to two elegant young ladies torturing a piano, and another still more elegant young lady severely flogging a harp. The effect of this, so far as our English Paul de Kocks are concerned, is, that their linen-drapers, and lacemen, and rich perfumers, are represented assuming a character that does not belong to them, and aping people whom they falsely suppose to be their betters; whereas the genuine Paul paints the Parisian tradesmen without any affectation at all. Ours are made laughable by the common farcical attributes of all pretensions, great or small; while real unsophisticated shopkeeping (French) nature is the staple of Paul's character-sketches, and they are more valuable, and in the end more interesting, accordingly. Who cares for the exaggerated efforts of a Manchester warehouseman to be polished and gentlemanly? It is only acting after all, and gives us no insight into his real character, or the character of his class, any more than Mr Coates' anxiety to be Romeo enlightened us as to his disposition in other respects. The Manchester warehouseman, though he fails in his attempt at fashionable parts, may be a very estimable and pains-taking individual, and, with the single exception of that foible, offers nothing to the most careful observer to distinguish him from the stupid and respectable in any part of the world. And in this respect, any one starting as the chronicler of citizen life among us, would labour under a great disadvantage. Whether our people are phlegmatic, or stupid, or sensible—all three of which epithets are generally applicable to the same individual—or that they have no opportunities of showing their peculiarities from the domestic habits of the animal—it is certain that, however better they may be qualified for the business of life than their neighbours, they are far less fitted for the pages of a book. And the proof of it is this, that wherever any of our novelists has introduced a tradesman, he has either been an invention altogether, or a caricature. Even Bailie Nicol Jarvie never lived in the Saut Market in half such true flesh and blood as he does in Rob Roy. At all events, the inimitable Bailie is known to the universe at large by the additions made to his real character by the prodigal hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous contrasts in which he is placed with the caterans and reivers of the hills. In the city of Glasgow he was looked upon, and justly, as an honour to the gude town—consulted on all difficult matters, and famous for his knowledge of the world and his natural sagacity. Would this have been a fit subject for description? or is it just to think of the respectable Bailie in the ridiculous point of view in which he is presented to us in the Highlands? How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of the harem—threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from odd juxtapositions. He knows nothing about caves and prisons and brigands—but he knows every corner of coffee-houses, and beer-shops, and ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms give him the command of another set of characters, totally unknown to the English world of fiction, because non-existent in England. With us, no shop-boy or apprentice would take his sweetheart to a public hop at any of the licenced music-houses. No decent girl would go there, nor even any girl that wished to keep up the appearance of decency. No flirtations, to end in matrimony, take their rise between an embryo boot-maker and a barber's daughter, in the course of the chaine Anglaise beneath the trees of the Green Park, or even at the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have flinty hearts, and the above-mentioned barber would probably increase the beauty of his daughter's "bonny black eye," by giving her another, if she talked of going to a ball, whether in a room or the open air. The Puritans have left their mark. Dancing is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual M.C. But let us follow the barber, or rather hairdresser—for the mere gleaner of beards is not intended by the name—into his own amusements. In Paul de Kock he goes to a coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee, and pockets the entire sugar; or to a ball, where he performs all the offices of a court chamberlain, and captivates all hearts by his graceful deportment. His wife, perhaps, goes with him, and flirts in a very business-like manner with a tobacconist; and his daughter is whirled about in a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the young confectioner, with as much elegance and decorum as if they were a young marquis and his bride in the dancing hall at Devonshire House. Our English friend goes to enjoy a pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a cigar, and gin and water, at the neighbouring inn. Or when he determines on having a night of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the order of the evening. A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has a bumper. He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats himself at the instrument. The stout man sings, the young man plays, and thunders of applause, and various fresh orders for kidneys and strong ale, and welch rabbits and cold-without, reward their exertions. Drinking goes on for some time, and waiters keep flying about with dishes of all kinds, and the hairdresser becomes communicative to his next neighbour, a butcher from Whitechapel, and they exchange their sentiments about kidneys and music in general, and the kidneys and music now offered to them in particular. In a few minutes, a gentleman with a strange obliquity in his vision, seated in the middle of the coffee-room, takes off his hat, and after a thump on the table from the landlord's hammer, commences a song so intensely comic, that when it is over, the orders for supper and drink are almost unanimous. The house is now full, the theatres have discharged their hungry audiences, and a distinguished guinea-a-week performer seats himself in the very next box to the hairdresser. That worthy gentleman by this time is stuffed so full of kidneys, and has drank so many glasses of brandy and water, that he can scarcely understand the explanations of the Whitechapel butcher, who has a great turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat the dramatic performer to a tumbler of gin-twist. Another knock on the table produces a momentary silence, and a little man starts off with an extempore song, where the conviviality of the landlord, and the goodness of his suppers, are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in the police-office. The Frenchman, on the other hand, never gets into mischief from an overdose of eau sucrée, though sometimes he certainly becomes very rombustious from a glass or two of vin ordinaire; and nothing astonishes us so much as the small quantities of small drink which have an effect on the brains of the steadiest of the French population. They get not altogether drunk, but decidedly very talkative, and often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of excitement after two rounds of a bottle—jostling the peasants, and talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when they quarrel, what a Babel of words, and what a quakerism of hands! Instead of a round or two between the parties, as it would be in our own pugnacious disagreements, they merely, when it comes to the worst, push each other from side to side, and shout lustily for the police; and squalling women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster—but not a single blow! The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful mêlée, the violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily as a marriage-bell." We don't say, at the present moment, that one of these methods of conducting a quarrel is better than the other, (though we confess we are rather partial to a hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on the claret-cork)—all we mean to advance is, that with the materials to work upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful describer of real scenes, has a manifest advantage over the describer of English incidents of a parallel kind.

The affectations of a French cit, when that nondescript animal condescends to be affected, are more varied and interesting than those of their brethren here. He has a taste for the fine arts—he talks about the opera—likes to know artists and authors—and, though living up five or six pairs of stairs in a narrow lane, gives soirées and conversazionés. More ludicrous all this, and decidedly less disgusting, than the assumptions of our man-milliners and fishmongers. There is short sketch by Paul de Kock, called a Soirée Bourgeoise, which we translate entire, as an illustration of this curious phase of French character; and we shall take an early opportunity of bringing before our readers the essays of the daily feuilletonists of the Parisian press, which give a clearer insight into the peculiarities of French domestic literature than can be acquired in any other quarter.

A CIT'S SOIREE.

Lights were observed some time ago, in the four windows of an apartment on the second floor of a house in the Rue Grenetat. It was not quite so brilliant as the Cercle des Etrangers, but still it announced something. These four windows, with lights glancing in them all, had an air of rejoicing, and the industrious inhabitants of the Rue Grenetat, who don't generally go to much expense for illumination, even in their shops, looked at the four windows which eclipsed the street lamps in their brilliancy, and said, "There's certainly something very extraordinary going on this evening at M. Lupot's!" M. Lupot is an honest tradesman, who has retired from business some time. After having sold stationary for thirty years, without ever borrowing of a neighbour, or failing in a payment, M. Lupot, having scraped together an income of three hundred and twenty pounds, disposed of his stock in trade, and closed his ledger, to devote himself entirely to the pleasures of domestic life with his excellent spouse, Madam Felicité Lupot—a woman of an amazingly apathetic turn of mind, who did admirably well in the shop as long as she had only to give change for half-crowns, but whose abilities extended no further. But this had not prevented her from making a very good wife to her husband, (which proves that much talent is not required for that purpose,) and presenting him with a daughter and a son.

The daughter was the eldest, and had attained her seventeenth year; and M. Lupot, who spared nothing on her education, did not despair of finding a husband for her with a soul above sticks of sealing-wax and wafers—more especially as it was evident she had no turn for trade, and believed she had a decided genius for the fine arts—for she had painted her father as a shepherd with his crook, when she was only twelve, and had learned a year after to play "Je suis Lindore" by ear on the piano. M. Lupot was proud of his daughter, who was thus a painter and a musician; who was a foot taller than her papa; who held herself as upright as a Prussian grenadier; who made a curtsy like Taglioni, who had a Roman nose three times the size of other people's, a mouth to match, and eyes so arch and playful, that it was difficult to discover them. The boy was only seven; he was allowed to do whatever he chose—he was so very young; and Monsieur Ascanius availed himself of the permission, and was in mischief from morning to night. His father was too fond of him to scold him, and his mother wouldn't take the trouble to get into a passion.

Well, then, one morning M. Lupot soliloquized—"I have a good fortune, a charming family, and a wife who has never been in a rage; but all this does not lead to a man's being invited, courted, and made much of in the world. Since I have cut the hotpress-wove and red sealing-wax, I have seen nobody but a few friends—retired tradesmen like myself—who drop in to take a hand at vingt-et-un, or loto; but I wish more than that—my daughter must not live in so narrow a circle; my daughter has a decided turn for the arts; I ought to have artists to my house. I will give soirées, tea-parties—yes, with punch at parting, if it be necessary. We shall play bouillote and écarte, for my daughter can't endure loto. Indeed, I wish to set people talking about my re-unions, and to find a husband for Celanire worthy of her." M. Lupot was seated near his wife, who was seated on an elastic sofa, and was caressing a cat on her knee. He said to her—

"My dear Felicité, I intend to give soirées—to receive lots of company. We live in too confined a sphere for our daughter, who was born for the arts—and for Ascanius, who, it strikes me, will make some noise in the world."

Madame Lupot continued to caress the cat, and replied, "Well, what have I to do with that? Do I hinder you from receiving company? If it doesn't cause me any trouble—for I must tell you first of all, you musn't count on me to help you"—

"You will have nothing at all to do, my dear Felicité, but the honours of the house."

"You do it so gracefully," replied the husband—"I will give all the orders, and Celanire will second me."

Mademoiselle was enchanted with the intention of her sire, and threw her arms round his neck.

"Oh yes! papa," she said, "invite as many as you can, I will learn to play some country-dances that we may have a ball, and finish my head of Belisarius—you must get it framed for the occasion."

And the little Ascanius whooped and hollo'd in the middle of the room. "I shall have tea and punch and cakes. I'll eat every thing!"

After this conversation M. Lupot had set to work. He went to his friends and his friends' friends—to people he hardly knew, and invited them to his party, begging them to bring any body with them they liked. M. Lupot had formerly sold rose-coloured paper to a musician, and drawing pencils to an artist. He went to his ancient customers, and pressed them to come and to bring their professional friends with them. In short, M. Lupot was so prodigiously active that in four days he had run through nearly the whole of Paris, caught an immense cold, and spent seven shillings in cab hire. Giving an entertainment has its woes as well as its pleasures.

The grand day, or rather the grand evening, at last arrived. All the lamps were lighted, and they had even borrowed some from their neighbours; for Celanire had discovered that their own three lamps did not give light enough both for the public-room and the supper-room—(which on ordinary occasions was a bed-chamber.) It was the first time that M. Lupot had borrowed any thing—but also it was the first time that M. Lupot gave a soirée.

From the dawn of day M. Lupot was busy in preparation: He had ordered in cakes and refreshments; bought sundry packs of cards, brushed the tables, and tucked up the curtains. Madame Lupot had sat all the time quietly on the sofa, ejaculating from time to time, "I'm afraid 'twill be a troublesome business all this receiving company."

Celanire had finished her Belisarius, who was an exact likeness of Blue Beard, and whom they had honoured with a Gothic frame, and placed in a conspicuous part of the room. Mademoiselle Lupot was dressed with amazing care. She had a new gown, her hair plaited à la Clotilde. All this must make a great sensation. Ascanius was rigged out in his best; but this did not hinder him from kicking up a dust in the room, from getting up on the furniture, handling the cards, and taking them to make houses; from opening the cupboards, and laying his fingers on the cakes.

Sometimes M. Lupot's patience gave way, and he cried, "Madame, I beg you'll make your son be quiet." But Madame Lupot answered without turning her head, "Make him quiet yourself, M. Lupot—You know very well it's your business to manage him."

It was now eight o'clock, and nobody was yet arrived. Mademoiselle looked at her father, who looked at his wife, who looked at her cat. The father of the family muttered every now and then—"Are we to have our grand soirée all to ourselves?" And he cast doleful looks on his lamps, his tables, and all his splendid preparations. Mademoiselle Celanire sighed and looked at her dress, and then looked in the mirror. Madame Lupot was as unmoved as ever, and said, "Is this what we've turned every thing topsy-turvy for?" As for little Ascanius, he jumped about the room, and shouted, "If nobody comes, what lots of cakes we shall have!" At last the bell rang. It is a family from the Rue St Denis, retired perfumers, who have only retained so much of their ancient profession, that they cover themselves all over with odours. When they enter the room, you feel as if a hundred scent-bottles were opened at once. There is such a smell of jasmine and vanille, that you have good luck if you get off without a headache. Other people drop in. M. Lupot does not know half his guests, for many of them are brought by others, and even these he scarcely knows the names of. But he is enchanted with every thing. A young fashionable is presented to him by some unknown third party, who says, "This is one of our first pianists, who is good enough to give up a great concert this evening to come here." The next is a famous singer, a lion in musical parties, who is taken out every where, and who will give one of his latest compositions, though unfortunately labouring under a cold. This man won the first prize at the Conservatory, an unfledged Boildieu, who will be a great composer of operas—when he can get librettos to his music, and music to his librettos. The next is a painter. He has shown at the exhibition—he has had wonderful success. To be sure nobody bought his pictures, because he didn't wish to sell them to people that couldn't appreciate them. In short, M. Lupot sees nobody in his rooms that is not first-rate in some way or other. He is delighted with the thought—ravished, transported. He can't find words enough to express his satisfaction at having such geniuses in his house. For their sakes he neglects his old friends—he scarcely speaks to them. It seems the new-comers, people he has never seen before, are the only people worthy of his attentions. Madame Lupot is tired of getting up, curtsying, and sitting down again. But her daughter is radiant with joy; her husband goes from room to room, rubbing his hands, as if he had bought all Paris, and got it a bargain. And little Ascanius never comes out of the bed-room without his mouth full. But it is not enough to invite a large party; you must know how to amuse them; it is a thing which very few people have the art of, even those most accustomed to have soirées. In some you get tired, and you are in great ceremony; you must restrict yourself to a conversation that is neither open, nor friendly, nor amusing. In others, you are pestered to death by the amphitryon, who is perhaps endowed with the bump of music, and won't leave the piano for fear some one else should take his place. There are others fond of cards, who only ask their friends that they may make up a table. Such individuals care for nothing but the game, and don't trouble themselves whether the rest of their guests are amused or not. Ah! there are few homes that know how to receive their company, or make every body pleased. It requires a tact, a cleverness, an absence of self, which must surely be very unusual since we see so few specimens of them in the soirées we attend.

M. Lupot went to and fro—from the reception-room to the bed-chamber, and back again—he smiled, he bowed, and rubbed his hands. But the new-comers, who had not come to his house to see him smile and rub his hands, began to say, in very audible whispers, "Ah, well, do people pass the whole night here looking at each other? Very delightful—very!"

M. Lupot has tried to start a conversation with a big man in spectacles, with a neckcloth of great dimensions, and who makes extraordinary faces as he looks round on the company. M. Lupot has been told, that the gentleman with the large neckcloth is a literary man, and that he will probably be good enough to read or recite some lines of his own composition. The ancient stationer coughs three times before venturing to address so distinguished a character, but says at last—"Enchanted to see at my house a gentleman so—an author of such——"

"Ah, you're the host here, are you?—the master of the house?"—said the man in the neckcloth.

"I flatter myself I am—with my wife, of course—the lady on the sofa—you see her? My daughter, sir—she's the tall young lady, so upright in her figure. She designs, and has an excellent touch on the piano. I have a son also—a little fiend—it was he who crept this minute between my legs—he's an extraordinary clev——"

"There is one thing, sir," replied the big man, "that I can't comprehend—a thing that amazes me—and that is, that people who live in the Rue Grenetat should give parties. It is a miserable street—a horrid street—covered eternally with mud—choked up with cars—a wretched part of the town, dirty, noisy, pestilential—bah!"

"Oh Lord, sir, I should have died thirty times over! When people live in the Rue Grenetat they should give up society, for you'll grant it is a regular trap to seduce people into such an abominable street. I"——

M. Lupot gave up smiling and rubbing his hands. He moves off from the big man in the spectacles, whose conversation had by no means amused him, and he goes up to a group of young people who seem examining the Belisarius of Mademoiselle Celanire.

"They're admiring my daughter's drawing," said M. Lupot to himself; "I must try to overhear what these artists are saying." The young people certainly made sundry remarks on the performance, plentifully intermixed with sneers of a very unmistakable kind.

"Impossible!—it's the portrait of some grocer, some relation, probably, of the family—look at the nose—the mouth—"

"Why, it isn't half so good as the head of the Wandering Jew at the top of a penny ballad."

M. Lupot has heard enough. He slips off from the group without a word, and glides noiselessly to the piano. The young performer who had sacrificed a great concert to come to his soirée, had sat down to the instrument and run his fingers over the notes.

"What a spinnet!" he cried—"what a wretched kettle! How can you expect a man to perform on such a miserable instrument? The thing is absurd—hear this A—hear this G—it's like a hurdygurdy—not one note of it in tune!" But the performer stayed at the piano notwithstanding, and played incessantly, thumping the keys with such tremendous force, that every minute a chord snapped; when such a thing happened—he burst into a laugh, and said, "Good! there's another gone—there will soon be none left."

M. Lupot flushed up to the ears. He felt very much inclined to say to the celebrated performer, "Sir, I didn't ask you here to break all the chords of my piano. Let the instrument alone if you don't like it, but don't hinder other people from playing on it for our amusement."

But the good M. Lupot did not venture on so bold a speech, which would have been a very sensible speech nevertheless; and he stood quietly while his chords were getting smashed, though it was by no means a pleasant thing to do.

Mademoiselle Celanire goes up to her father. She is distressed at the way her piano is treated; she has no opportunity of playing her air; but she hopes to make up for it by singing a romance, which one of their old neighbours is going to accompany on the guitar.

It is not without some difficulty that M. Lupot obtains silence for his daughter's song. At sight of the old neighbour and his guitar a smothered laugh is visible in the assembly. It is undeniable that the gentleman is not unlike a respectable Troubadour with a barrel organ, and that his guitar is like an ancient harp. There is great curiosity to hear the old gentleman touch his instrument. He begins by beating time with his feet and his head, which latter movement gives him very much the appearance of a mandarin that you sometimes see on a mantelpiece. Nevertheless Mademoiselle Lupot essays her ballad; but she can never manage to overtake her accompanier, who, instead of following the singer, seems determined to make no alteration in the movement of his head and feet. The ballad is a failure—Celanire is confused, she has mistaken her notes—she loses her recollection; and, instead of hearing his daughter's praises, M. Lupot overhears the young people whispering—"It wouldn't do in a beer-shop."

"I must order in the tea," thought the ex-stationer—"it will perhaps put them into good-humour."

And M. Lupot rushes off to give instructions to the maid; and that old individual, who has never seen such a company before, does not know how to get on, and breaks cups and saucers without mercy, in the effort to make haste.

"Nannette, have you got ready the other things you were to bring in with the tea?—the muffins—the cakes?"

"Yes, sir"—replied Nannette—"all is ready—every thing will be in in a moment."

"It is an English dish—I explained it to you before—slices of bread and butter, with ham between."

"Well—make haste, Nannette; get ready some immediately, while my daughter hands round the tea and muffins—you can bring them in on a tray."

The old domestic hurries into the kitchen grumbling at the English dainty, and cuts some slices of bread and covers them with butter; but as she had never thought of the ham, she cogitates a long time how she can supply the want of it—at last, on looking round, she discovers a piece of beef that had been left at dinner.

"Pardieu," she says, "I'll cut some lumps of this and put them on the bread. With plenty of salt they'll pass very well for ham—they'll drive me wild with their English dishes—they will."

The maid speedily does as she says, and then hurries into the room with a tray covered with her extempore ham sandwiches.

Every body takes one,—for they have grown quite fashionable along with tea. But immediately there is an universal murmur in the assembly. The ladies throw their slices into the fire, the gentlemen spit theirs on the furniture, and they cry—"why the devil do people give us things like these?—they're detestable."

"It's my opinion, God forgive me! the man means to feed us with scraps from the pig-trough," says another.

"And all the little cakes look as if they had been fingered before," says the fifth.

"Decidedly they wish to poison us," says the big man in the neckcloth, looking very morose.

M. Lupot is in despair. He goes in search of Nannette, who has hidden herself in the kitchen; and he busies himself in gathering up the fragments of the bread and butter from the floor and the fireplace.

Madame Lupot says nothing; but she is in very bad humour, for she has put on a new cap, which she felt sure would be greatly admired; and a lady has come to her and said—

"Ah, madame, what a shocking head-dress!—your cap is very old-fashioned—those shapes are quite gone out."

"And yet, madame," replies Madame Lupot, "I bought it, not two days ago, in the Rue St Martin."

"Well, madame—Is that the street you go to for the fashions? Go to Mademoiselle Alexina Larose Carrefous Gaillon—you'll get delicious caps there—new fashions and every thing so tasteful: for Heaven's sake, madame, never put on that cap again. You look, at least, a hundred."

"It's worth one's while, truly," thought Madame Lupot, "to tire one's self to death receiving people, to be treated to such pretty compliments."

Her husband, in the meanwhile, continued his labours in pursuit of the rejected sandwiches.

The big man in spectacles, who wondered that people could live in the Rue Grenetat, had no idea, nevertheless, of coming there for nothing. He has seated himself in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, and informs the company that he is going to repeat a few lines of his own to them.—The society seems by no means enchanted with the announcement, but forms itself in a circle, to listen to the poet. He coughs and spits, wipes his mouth, tales a pinch of snuff, sneezes, has the lamps raised, the doors shut, asks a tumbler of sugar and water, and passes his hand through his hair. After continuing these operations for some minutes, the literary man at last begins. He spouts his verses in a voice enough to break the glasses; before he has spoken a minute, he has presented a tremendous picture of crimes, and deaths, and scaffolds, sufficient to appal the stoutest hearts, when suddenly a great crash from the inner room attracts universal attention. It is the young Ascanius, who was trying to get a muffin on the top of a pile of dishes, and has upset the table, with muffin, and dishes, and all on his own head. M. Lupot runs off to ascertain the cause of the dreadful cries of his son; the company follow him, not a little rejoiced to find an excuse for hearing no more of the poem; and the poet, deprived in this way of an audience, gets up in a furious passion, takes his hat, and rushes from the room, exclaiming—"It serves me right. How could I have been fool enough to recite good verses in the Rue Grenetat!"

Ascanius is brought in and roars lustily, for two of the dishes have been broken on his nose; and as there is no chance now, either of poetry or music, the party have recourse to cards—for it is impossible to sit all night and do nothing.

They make up a table at bouillote, and another at ecarté. M. Lupot takes his place at the latter. He is forced to cover all the bets when his side refuses; and M. Lupot, who never played higher than shilling stakes in his life, is horrified when they tell him—"You must lay down fifteen francs to equal our stakes."

"It means, that you must make up the stakes of your side, to what we have put down on this. The master of the house is always expected to make up the difference."

M. Lupot dare not refuse. He lays down his fifteen francs and loses them; next game the deficiency is twenty. In short, in less than half an hour, the ex-stationer loses ninety francs. His eyes start out of his head—he scarcely knows where he is; and to complete his misery, the opposite party, in lifting up the money they have won, upset one of the lamps he had borrowed from his neighbours, and smashed it into fifty pieces.

At last the hour of separation comes. The good citizen has been anxious for it for a long time. All his gay company depart, without even wishing good-night to the host who has exerted himself so much for their entertainment. The family of the Lupots are left alone; Madame, overcome with fatigue, and vexed because her cap had been found fault with; Celanire, with tears in her eyes, because her music and Belisarius had been laughed at; and Ascanius sick and ill, because he has nearly burst himself with cakes and muffins; M. Lupot was, perhaps, the unhappiest of all, thinking of his ninety francs and the broken lamp. Old Annette gathered up the crumbs of the sandwiches, and muttered—"Do they think people make English dishes to have them thrown into the corners of the room?"

"It's done," said M. Lupot; "I shall give no more soirées. I begin to think I was foolish in wishing to leave my own sphere. When people of the same class lark and joke each other, it's all very well; but when you meddle with your superiors, and they are uncivil, it hurts your feelings. Their mockery is an insult, and you don't get over it soon. My dear Celanire, I shall decidedly try to marry you to a stationer."

THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART III.

THE ARISTOCRACIES OF LONDON LIFE.

OF GENTILITY-MONGERING.

The HEAVY SWELL was recorded in our last for the admiration and instruction of remote ages. When the nineteenth century shall be long out of date, and centuries in general out of their teens, posterity will revert to our delineation of the heavy swell with pleasure undiminished, through the long succession of ages yet to come; the macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be forgotten, or remembered only in our graphic portraiture of the heavy swell. But the heavy swell is, after all, a harmless nobody. His curse, his besetting sin, his monomania, is vanity tinctured with pride: his weak point can hardly be called a crime, since it affects and injures nobody but himself, if, indeed, it can be said to injure him who glories in his vocation—who is the echo of a sound, the shadow of a shade.

The GENTILITY-MONGERS, on the contrary, are positively noxious to society, as well particular as general. There is a twofold or threefold iniquity in their goings-on; they sin against society, their families, and themselves; the whole business of their lives is a perversion of the text of Scripture, which commandeth us, "in whatever station we are, therewith to be content."

The gentility-monger is a family man, having a house somewhere in Marylebone, or Pancras parish. He is sometimes a man of independent fortune—how acquired, nobody knows; that is his secret, his mystery. He will let no one suppose that he has ever been in trade; because, when a man intends gentility-mongering, it must never be known that he has formerly carried on the tailoring, or the shipping, or the cheese-mongering, or the fish-mongering, or any other mongering than the gentility-mongering. His house is very stylishly furnished; that is to say, as unlike the house of a man of fashion as possible—the latter having only things the best of their kind, and for use; the former displaying every variety of extravagant gimcrackery, to impress you with a profound idea of combined wealth and taste, but which, to an educated eye and mind only, conveys a lively idea of ostentation. When you call upon a gentility-monger, a broad-shouldered, coarse, ungentlemanlike footman, in Aurora plushes, ushers you to a drawing-room, where, on tables round, and square, and hexagonal, are set forth jars, porcelain, china, and delft; shells, spars; stuffed parrots under bell-glasses; corals, minerals, and an infinity of trumpery, among which albums, great, small, and intermediate, must by no means be forgotten.

The room is papered with some splendacious pattern in blue and gold; a chandelier of imposing gingerbread depends from the richly ornamented ceiling; every variety of ottoman, lounger, settee, is scattered about, so that to get a chair involves the right-of-search question; the bell-pulls are painted in Poonah; there is a Brussels carpet of flaming colours, curtains with massive fringes, bad pictures in gorgeous frames; prints, after Ross, of her Majesty and Prince Albert, of course; and mezzotints of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, for whom the gentility-monger has a profound respect, and of whom he talks with a familiarity showing that it is not his fault, at least, if these exalted personages do not admit him to the honour of their acquaintance.

In fact, you see the drawing-room is not intended for sitting down in, and when the lady appears, you are inclined to believe she never sits down; at least the full-blown swell of that satin skirt seems never destined to the compression of a chair. The conversation is as usual—"Have you read the morning paper?"—meaning the Court Circular and fashionable intelligence; "do you know whether the Queen is at Windsor or Claremont, and how long her Majesty intends to remain; whether town is fuller than it was, or not so full; when the next Almacks' ball takes place; whether you were at the last drawing-room, and which of the fair debutantes you most admire; whether Tamburini is to be denied us next year?" with many lamentations touching the possible defection, as if the migrations of an opera thrush were of the least consequence to any rational creature—of course you don't say so, but lament Tamburini as if he were your father; "whether it is true that we are to have the two Fannies, Taglioni and Cerito, this season; and what a heaven of delight we shall experience from the united action of these twenty supernatural pettitoes." You needn't express yourself after this fashion, else you will shock miss, who lounges near you in an agony of affected rapture: you must sigh, shrug your shoulders, twirl your cane, and say "divine—yes—hope it may be so—exquisite—exquisite." This naturally leads you to the last new songs, condescendingly exhibited to you by miss, if you are somebody, (if nobody, miss does not appear;) you are informed that "My heart is like a pickled salmon" is dedicated to the Duchess of Mundungus, and thereupon you are favoured with sundry passages (out of Debrett) upon the intermarriages, &c., of that illustrious family; you are asked whether Bishop is the composer of "I saw her in a twinkling," and whether the minor is not fine? Miss tells you she has transposed it from G to C, as suiting her voice better—whereupon mamma acquaints you, that a hundred and twenty guineas for a harp is moderate, she thinks; you think so too, taking that opportunity to admire the harp, saying that you saw one exactly like it at Lord (any Lord that strikes you) So-and-So's, in St James's Square. This produces an invitation to dinner; and with many lamentations on English weather, and an eulogium on the climate of Florence, you pay your parting compliments, and take your leave.

At dinner you meet a claret-faced Irish absentee, whose good society is a good dinner, and who is too happy to be asked any where that a good dinner is to be had; a young silky clergyman, in black curled whiskers, and a white choker; one of the meaner fry of M.P.'s; a person who calls himself a foreign count; a claimant of a dormant peerage; a baronet of some sort, not above the professional; sundry propriety-faced people in yellow waistcoats, who say little, and whose social position you cannot well make out; half-a-dozen ladies of an uncertain age, dressed in grand style, with turbans of imposing tournure; and a young, diffident, equivocal-looking gent who sits at the bottom of the table, and whom you instinctively make out to be a family doctor, tutor, or nephew, with expectations. No young ladies, unless the young ladies of the family, appear at the dinner-parties of these gentility-mongers; because the motive of the entertainment is pride, not pleasure; and therefore prigs and frumps are in keeping, and young women with brains, or power of conversation, would only distract attention from the grand business of life, that is to say, dinner; besides, a seat at table here is an object, where the expense is great, and nobody is asked for his or her own sake, but for an object either of ostentation, interest, or vanity. Hospitality never enters into the composition of a gentility-monger: he gives a dinner, wine, and a shake of the hand, but does not know what the word welcome means: he says, now and then, to his wife "My dear, I think we must give a dinner;" a dinner is accordingly determined on, cards issued three weeks in advance, that you may be premeditatedly dull; the dinner is gorgeous to repletion, that conversation may be kept as stagnant as possible. Of those happy surprize invitations—those unexpected extemporaneous dinners, that as they come without thinking or expectation, so go off with eclat, and leave behind the memory of a cheerful evening—he has no idea; a man of fashion, whose place is fixed, and who has only himself to please, will ask you to a slice of crimped cod and a hash of mutton, without ceremony; and when he puts a cool bottle on the table, after a dinner that he and his friend have really enjoyed, will never so much as apologize with, "my dear sir, I fear you have had a wretched dinner," or "I wish I had known: I should have had something better." This affected depreciation of his hospitality he leaves to the gentility-monger, who will insist on cramming you with fish, flesh, and fowls, till you are like to burst; and then, by way of apology, get his guests to pay the reckoning in plethoric laudation of his mountains of victual.

If you wait in the drawing-room, kicking your heels for an hour after the appointed time, although you arrived to a minute, as every Christian does, you may be sure that somebody who patronizes the gentility-monger, probably the Honourable Mr Sniftky, is expected, and has not come. It is vain for you to attempt to talk to your host, hostess, or miss, who are absorbed, body and soul, in expectation of Honourable Sniftky; the propriety-faced people in the yellow waistcoats attitudinize in groups about the room, putting one pump out, drawing the other in, inserting the thumb gracefully in the arm-hole of the yellow waistcoats, and talking icicles; the young fellows play with a sprig of lily-of-the-valley in a button-hole—admire a flowing portrait of miss, asking one another if it is not very like—or hang over the back of a chair of one of the turbaned ladies, who gives good evening parties; the host receives a great many compliments upon one thing and another, from some of the professed diners-out, who take every opportunity of paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred, and "curses, not loud but deep," are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky. At last, a prolonged rat-tat-tat announces the arrival of the noble beast, the lion of the evening; the Honourable Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in the Foreign Office, is announced by the footman out of livery, (for the day,) and announces himself a minute after: he comes in a long-tailed coat and boots, to show his contempt for his entertainers, and mouths a sort of apology for keeping his betters waiting, which is received by the gentility-monger, his lady, and miss, with nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles of unqualified admiration and respect.

As the order of precedence at the house of a gentility-monger is not strictly understood, the host desires Honourable Sniftky to take down miss; and calling out the names of the other guests, like muster-master of the guards, pairs them, and sends them down to the dining-room, where you find the nephew, or family doctor, (or whatever he is,) who has inspected the arrangement of the table, already in waiting.

You take your place, not without that excess of ceremony that distinguishes the table of a gentility-monger; the Honourable Sniftky, ex-officio, takes his place between mamma and miss, glancing vacancy round the table, lest any body should think himself especially honoured by a fixed stare; covers are removed by the mob of occasional waiters in attendance, and white soup and brown soup, thick and heavy as judges of assize, go circuit.

Then comes hobnobbing, with an interlocutory dissertation upon a plateau, candelabrum, or some other superfluous machine, in the centre of the table. One of the professed diners-out, discovers for the twentieth time an inscription in dead silver on the pedestal, and enquires with well-affected ignorance whether that is a present; the gentility-monger asks the diner-out to wine, as he deserves, then enters into a long apologetical self-laudation of his exertions in behalf of the CANNIBAL ISLANDS, ABORIGINES, PROTECTION, AND BRITISH SUBJECT TRANSPORTATION SOCIETY, (some emigration crimping scheme, in short,) in which his humble efforts to diffuse civilization and promote Christianity, however unworthy, ("No, no!" from the diner-out,) gained the esteem of his fellow-labourers, and the approbation of his own con——"Shall I send you some fish, sir?" says the man at the foot of the table, addressing himself to the Honourable Sniftky, and cutting short the oration.

A monstrous salmon and a huge turbot are now dispensed to the hungry multitude; the gentility-monger has no idea that the biggest turbot is not the best; he knows it is the dearest, and that is enough for him; he would have his dishes like his cashbook, to show at a glance how much he has at his banker's. When the flesh of the guests has been sufficiently fishified, there is an interregnum, filled up with another circuit of wine, until the arrival of the pièces de resistance, the imitations of made dishes, and the usual etceteras. The conversation, meanwhile, is carried on in a staccato style; a touch here, a hit there, a miss almost every where; the Honourable Sniftky turning the head of mamma with affected compliments, and hobnobbing to himself without intermission. After a sufficiently tedious interval, the long succession of wasteful extravagance is cleared away with the upper tablecloth; the dowagers, at a look from our hostess, rise with dignity and decorously retire, miss modestly bringing up the rear—the man at the foot of the table with the handle of the door in one hand, and a napkin in the other, bowing them out.

Now the host sings out to the Honourable Sniftky to draw his chair closer and be jovial, as if people, after an oppressively expensive dinner, can be jovial to order. The wine goes round, and laudations go with it; the professed diners-out enquire the vintage; the Honourable Mr Sniftky intrenches himself behind a rampart of fruit dishes, speaking only when he is spoken to, and glancing inquisitively at the several speakers, as much as to say, "What a fellow you are, to talk;" the host essays a bon-mot, or tells a story bordering on the ideal, which he thinks is fashionable, and shows that he knows life; the Honourable Sniftky drinks claret from a beer-glass, and after the third bottle affects to discover his mistake, wondering what he could be thinking of; this produces much laughter from all save the professed diners-out, who dare not take such a liberty, and is the jest of the evening.

When the drinkers, drinkables, and talk are quite exhausted, the noise of a piano recalls to our bewildered recollections the ladies, and we drink their healths: the Honourable Sniftky, pretending that it is foreign-post night at the Foreign Office, walks off without even a bow to the assembled diners, the gentility-monger following him submissively to the door; then returning, tells us that he's sorry Sniftky's gone, he's such a good-natured fellow, while the gentleman so characterized gets into his cab, drives to his club, and excites the commiseration of every body there, by relating how he was bored with an old ruffian, who insisted upon his (Sniftky's) going to dinner in Bryanston Square; at which there are many "Oh's!" and "Ah's!" and "what could you expect?—Bryanston Square!—served you right."

In the mean time, the guests, relieved of the presence of the Honourable Sniftky, are rather more at their ease; a baronet (who was lord mayor, or something of that sort) waxes jocular, and gives decided indications of something like "how came you so;" the man at the foot of the table contradicts one of the diners-out, and is contradicted in turn by the baronet; the foreign count is in deep conversation with a hard-featured man, supposed to be a stockjobber; the clergyman extols the labours of the host in the matter of the Cannibal Islands' Aborigines Protection Society, in which his reverence takes an interest; the claimant of the dormant peerage retails his pedigree, pulling to pieces the attorney-general, who has expressed an opinion hostile to his pretensions.

In the mean time, the piano is joined by a harp, in musical solicitation of the company to join the ladies in the drawing-room; they do so, looking flushed and plethoric, sink into easy-chairs, sip tea, the younger beaux turning over, with miss, Books of Beauty and Keepsakes: at eleven, coaches and cabs arrive, you take formal leave, expressing with a melancholy countenance your sense of the delightfulness of the evening, get to your chambers, and forget, over a broiled bone and a bottle of Dublin stout, in what an infernal, prosy, thankless, stone-faced, yellow-waistcoated, unsympathizing, unintellectual, selfish, stupid set you have been condemned to pass an afternoon, assisting, at the ostentatious exhibition of vulgar wealth, where gulosity has been unrelieved by one single sally of wit, humour, good-nature, humanity, or charity; where you come without a welcome, and leave without a friend.

The whole art of the gentility-mongers of all sorts in London, and à fortiori of their wives and families, is to lay a tax upon social intercourse as nearly as possible amounting to a prohibition; their dinners are criminally wasteful, and sinfully extravagant to this end; to this end they insist on making price the test of what they are pleased to consider select society in their own sets, and they consequently cannot have a dance without guinea tickets nor a pic-nic without dozens of champagne. This shows their native ignorance and vulgarity more than enough; genteel people go upon a plan directly contrary, not merely enjoying themselves, but enjoying themselves without extravagance or waste: in this respect the gentility-mongers would do well to imitate people of fashion.

The exertions a gentility-monger will make, to rub his skirts against people above him; the humiliations, mortifications, snubbing, he will submit to, are almost incredible. One would hardly believe that a retired tradesman, of immense wealth, and enjoying all the respect that immense wealth will secure, should actually offer large sums of money to a lady of fashion, as an inducement to procure for him cards of invitation to her set, which he stated was the great object of his existence. Instead of being indignant at his presumption, the lady in question, pitying the poor man's folly, attempted to reason with him, assuring him with great truth that whatever might be his wealth, his power or desire of pleasing, he would be rendered unhappy and ridiculous, by the mere dint of pretension to a circle to which he had no legitimate claim, and advising him, as a friend, to attempt some more laudable and satisfactory ambition.

All this good advice was, however, thrown away; our gentility-monger persevered, contriving somehow to gain a passport to some of the outer circles of fashionable life; was ridiculed, laughed at, and honoured with the soubriquet (he was a pianoforte maker) of the Semi-Grand!

We know another instance, where two young men, engaged in trade in the city, took a splendid mansion at the West End, furnished it sumptuously, got some desperate knight or baronet's widow to give parties at their house, inviting whomsoever she thought proper, at their joint expense. It is unnecessary to say, the poor fellows succeeded in getting into good society, not indeed in the Court Circular, but in the—Gazette.

There is another class of gentility-mongers more to be pitied than the last; those, namely, who are endeavouring to "make a connexion," as the phrase is, by which they may gain advancement in their professions, and are continually on the look-out for introductions to persons of quality, their hangers-on and dependents. There is too much of this sort of thing among medical men in London, the family nature of whose profession renders connexion, private partiality, and personal favour, more essential to them than to others. The lawyer, for example, need not be a gentility-monger; he has only to get round attorneys, for the opportunity to show what he can do, when he has done this, in which a little toadying, "on the sly," is necessary—all the rest is easy. The court and the public are his judges; his powers are at once appreciable, his talent can be calculated, like the money in his pocket; he can now go on straight forward, without valuing the individual preference or aversion of any body.

But a profession where men make way through the whisperings of women, and an inexhaustible variety of sotto voce contrivances, must needs have a tendency to create a subserviency of spirit and of manner, which naturally directs itself into gentility-mongering: where realities, such as medical experience, reading, and skill, are remotely, or not at all, appreciable, we must take up with appearances; and of all appearances, the appearance of proximity to people of fashion is the most taking and seductive to people not of fashion. It is for this reason that a rising physician, if he happen to have a lord upon his sick or visiting list, never has done telling his plebeian patients the particulars of his noble case, which they swallow like almond milk, finding it an excellent placebo.

As it is the interest of a gentility-monger, and his constant practice, to be attended by a fashionable physician, in order that he may be enabled continually to talk of what Sir Henry thinks of this, and how Sir Henry objects to that, and the opinion of Sir Henry upon t'other, so it is the business of the struggling doctor to be a gentility-monger, with the better chance of becoming one day or other a fashionable physician. Acting on this principle, the poor man must necessarily have a house in a professional neighbourhood, which usually abuts upon a neighbourhood fashionable or exclusive; he must hire a carriage by the month, and be for ever stepping in and out of it, at his own door, keeping it purposely bespattered with mud to show the extent of his visiting acquaintance; he must give dinners to people "who may be useful," and be continually on the look-out for those lucky accidents which have made the fortunes, and, as a matter of course, the merit, of so many professional men.

He becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society, which gives him the chance of conversing with a lord, and the right of entering a lord's (the president's) house, which is turned into sandwich-shop four times a-year for his reception; this, being the nearest approach he makes to acquaintance with great personages, he values with the importance it deserves.

His servants, with famine legibly written on their bones, are assiduous and civil; his wife, though half-starved, is very genteel, and at her dinner parties burns candle-ends from the palace.⁴⁸

If you pay her a morning visit, you will have some such conversation as follows.

"Indeed—the old story, shocking—very.—Pray, have you heard the delightful news? The Princess-Royal has actually cut a tooth!"

"Yes, I assure you; and the sweet little royal love of a martyr has borne it like a hero."

"Positively, I assure you; Doctor Tryiton has just returned from a consultation with his friend Sir Henry, upon a particularly difficult case—Lord Scruffskin—case of elephantiasis I think they call it, and tells me that Sir Henry has arrives express from Windsor with the news."

"There ought to be, [with emphasis.] You must know, Mr ——, Dr Tryiton has forwarded to a high quarter a beautifully bound copy of his work on ulcerated sore throat; he says there is a great analogy between ulcers of the throat and den—den—den—something, I don't know what—teething, in short. If nothing comes of it, Dr Tryiton, thank Heaven, can do without it; but you know, Mr ——, it may, on a future occasion, be useful to our family."

If there is, in the great world of London, one thing more spirit-sinking than another, it is to see men condemned, by the necessities of an overcrowded profession, to sink to the meannesses of pretension for a desperate accident by which they may insure success. When one has had an opportunity of being behind the scenes, and knowing what petty shifts, what poor expedients of living, what anxiety of mind, are at the bottom of all this empty show, one will not longer marvel that many born for better things should sink under the difficulties of their position, or that the newspapers so continually set forth the miserably unprovided for condition in which they so often are compelled to leave their families. To dissipate the melancholy that always oppresses us when constrained to behold the ridiculous antics of the gentility-mongers, which we chronicle only to endeavour at a reformation—let us contrast the hospitality of those who, with wiser ambition, keep themselves, as the saying is, "to themselves;" and, as a bright example, let us recollect our old friend Joe Stimpson.

Joe Stimpson is a tanner and leather-seller in Bermondsey, the architect of his own fortune, which he has raised to the respectable elevation of somewhere about a quarter of a million sterling. He is now in his seventy-second year, has a handsome house, without and pretension, overlooking his tanyard. He has a joke upon prospects, calling you to look from the drawing-room window at his tanpits, asking you if you ever saw any thing like that at the west end of the town; replying in the negative, Joe, chuckling, observes that it is the finest prospect he ever saw in his life, and although he has been admiring it for half a century, he has not done admiring it yet. Joe's capacity for the humorous may be judged of by this specimen; but in attention to business few can surpass him, while his hospitality can command a wit whenever he chooses to angle for one with a good dinner. He has a wife, a venerable old smiling lady in black silk, neat cap, and polished shoes; three daughters, unmarried; and a couple of sons, brought up, after the London fashion, to inherit their father's business, or, we might rather say, estate.

Why the three Miss Stimpsons remain unmarried, we cannot say, nor would it be decorous to enquire; but hearing them drop a hint now and then about visits, "a considerable time ago," to Brighthelmstone and Bath, we are led, however reluctantly in the case of ladies now evangelical, to conclude, their attention has formerly been directed to gentility-mongering at these places of fashionable resort; the tanyard acting as a repellent to husbands of a social position superior to their own, and their great fortunes operating in deterring worthy persons of their own station from addressing them; or being the means of inducing them to be too prompt with refusals, these amiable middle-aged young ladies are now "on hands," paying the penalty of one of the many curses that pride of wealth brings in its train. At present, however, their "affections are set on things above;" and, without meaning any thing disrespectful to my friend Joe Stimpson, Sarah, Harriet, and Susan Stimpson are certainly the three least agreeable members of the family. The sons are, like all other sons in the houses of their fathers, steady, business-like, unhappy, and dull; they look like fledged birds in the nest of the old ones, out of place; neither servants nor masters, their social position is somewhat equivocal, and having lived all their lives in the house of their father, seeing as he sees, thinking as he thinks, they can hardly be expected to appear more than a brace of immature Joe Stimpsons. They are not, it is true, tainted with much of the world's wickedness, neither have they its self-sustaining trials, its hopes, its fears, its honest struggles, or that experience which is gathered only by men who quit, when they can quit it, the petticoat string, and the paternal despotism of even a happy home. As for the old couple, time, although silvering the temples and furrowing the front, is hardly seen to lay his heavy hand upon the shoulder of either, much less to put his finger on eyes, ears, or lips—the two first being yet as "wide awake," and the last as open to a joke, or any other good thing, as ever they were; in sooth, it is no unpleasing sight to see this jolly old couple with nearly three half centuries to answer for, their affection unimpaired, faculties unclouded, and temper undisturbed by the near approach, beyond hope of respite, of that stealthy foe whose assured advent strikes terror to us all. Joe Stimpson, if he thinks of death at all, thinks of him as a pitiful rascal, to be kicked down stairs by the family physician; the Bible of the old lady is seldom far from her hand, and its consolations are cheering, calming, and assuring. The peevish fretfulness of age has nothing in common with man or wife, unless when Joe, exasperated with his evangelical daughters' continual absence at the class-meetings, and love-feasts, and prayer-meetings, somewhat indignantly complains, that "so long as they can get to heaven, they don't care who goes to ——," a place that Virgil and Tasso have taken much pains in describing, but which the old gentleman sufficiently indicates by one emphatic monosyllable.

Joe is a liberal-minded man, hates cant and humbug, and has no prejudices—hating the French he will not acknowledge is a prejudice, but considers the bounden duty of an Englishman; and, though fierce enough upon other subjects of taxation, thinks no price too high for drubbing them. He was once prevailed upon to attempt a journey to Paris; but having got to Calais, insisted upon returning by the next packet, swearing it was a shabby concern, and he had seen enough of it.

He takes in the Gentleman's Magazine, because his father did it before him—but he never reads it; he takes pride in a corpulent dog, which is ever at his heels; he is afflicted with face-ache, and swears at any body who calls it tic-douloureux.

When you go to dine with him, you are met at the door by a rosy-checked lass, with ribands in her cap, who smiles a hearty welcome, and assures you, though an utter stranger, of the character of the house and its owner. You are conducted to the drawing-room, a plain, substantial, honest-looking apartment; there you find the old couple, and are received with a warmth that gives assurance of the nearest approach to what is understood by home. The sons, released from business, arrive, shake you heartily by the hand, and are really glad to see you; of the daughters we say nothing, as there is nothing in them.

The other guests of the day come dropping in—all straightforward, business-like, free, frank-hearted fellows—aristocrats of wealth, the best, because the unpretending, of their class; they come, too, before their time, for they know their man, and that Joe Stimpson keeps nobody waiting for nobody. When the clock—for here is no gong—strikes five, you descend to dinner; plain, plentiful, good, and well dressed; no tedious course, with long intervals between; no oppressive set-out of superfluous plate, and what, perhaps, is not the least agreeable accessory, no piebald footmen hanging over your chair, whisking away your plate before you have done with it, and watching every bit you put into your mouth.

Your cherry-cheeked friend and another, both in the family from childhood, (another good sign of the house,) and looking as if they really were glad—and so they are—to have an opportunity of obliging you, do the servitorial offices of the table; you are sure of a glass of old sherry, and you may call for strong beer, or old port, with your cheese—or, if a Scotchman, for a dram—without any other remark than an invitation to "try it again, and make yourself comfortable."

After dinner, you are invited, as a young man, to smoke a cigar with the "boys," as Joe persists in calling them. You ascend to a bed-room, and are requested to keep your head out o' window while smoking, lest the "Governor" should snuff the fumes when he comes up stairs to bed: while you are "craning" your neck, the cherry-cheeked lass enters with brandy and water, and you are as merry and easy as possible. The rest of the evening passes away in the same unrestrained interchange of friendly courtesy; nor are you permitted to take your leave without a promise to dine on the next Sunday or holiday—Mrs Stimpson rating you for not coming last Easter Sunday, and declaring she cannot think "why young men should mope by themselves, when she is always happy to see them."

Honour to Joe Stimpson and his missus! They have the true ring of the ancient coin of hospitality; none of your hollow-sounding raps: they know they have what I want, a home, and they will not allow me, at their board, to know that I want one: they compassionate a lonely, isolated man, and are ready to share with him the hearty cheer and unaffected friendliness of their English fireside: they know that they can get nothing by me, nor do they ever dream of an acknowledgment for their kindness; but I owe them for many a social day redeemed from cheerless solitude; many an hour of strenuous labour do I owe to the relaxation of the old wainscotted dining-room at Bermondsey.

Honour to Joe Stimpson, and to all who are satisfied with their station, happy in their home, have no repinings after empty sounds of rank and shows of life; and who extend the hand of friendly fellowship to the homeless, because they have no home!

THE ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.

This illustration, borrowed by Sir James Mackintosh from chemical science, and so happily applied, may serve to indicate the undoubted truth, that talent is a growth as much as a gift; that circumstances call out and develop its latent powers; that as soil, flung upon the surface from the uttermost penetrable depths of earth, will be found to contain long-dormant germs of vegetable life, so the mind of man, acted upon by circumstances, will ever be found equal to a certain sum of production—the amount of which will be chiefly determined by the force and direction of the external influence which first set it in motion.

The more we reflect upon this important subject, we shall find the more, that external circumstances have an influence upon intellect, increasing in an accumulating ratio; that the political institutions of various countries have their fluctuating and contradictory influences; that example controls in a great degree intellectual production, causing after-growths, as it were, of the first luxuriant crop of masterminds, and giving a character and individuality to habits of thought and modes of expression; in brief, that great occasions will have great instruments, and there never was yet a noted time that had not noted men. Dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial times will make, if they do not find, dull, jog-trot, money-making, commercial men: in times when ostentation and expense are the measures of respect, when men live rather for the world's opinion than their own, poverty becomes not only the evil but the shame, not only the curse but the disgrace, and will be shunned by every man as a pestilence; every one will fling away immortality, to avoid it; will sink, as far as he can, his art in his trade; and he will be the greatest genius who can turn most money.

It may be urged that true genius has the power not only to take opportunities, but to make them: true, it may make such opportunities as the time in which it lives affords; but these opportunities will be great or small, noble or ignoble, as the time is eventful or otherwise. All depends upon the time, and you might as well have expected a Low Dutch epic poet in the time of the great herring fishery, as a Napoleon, a Demosthenes, a Cicero in this, by some called the nineteenth, but which we take leave to designate the "dot-and-carry-one" century. If a Napoleon were to arise at any corner of any London street, not five seconds would elapse until he would be "hooked" off to the station-house by Superintendent DOGSNOSE of the D division, with an exulting mob of men and boys hooting at his heels: if Demosthenes or Cicero, disguised as Chartist orators, mounting a tub at Deptford, were to Philippicize, or entertain this motley auditory with speeches against Catiline or Verres, straightway the Superintendent of the X division, with a posse of constables at his heels, dismounts the patriot orator from his tub, and hands him over to a plain-spoken business-like justice of the peace, who regards an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing point of view with any other vagabond.

What is become of the eloquence of the bar? Why is it that flowery orators find no grist coming to their mills? How came it that, at Westminster Hall, Charles Philips missed his market? What is the reason, that if you step into the Queen's Bench, or Common Pleas, or Exchequer, you will hear no such thing as a speech—behold no such animal as an orator—only a shrewd, plain, hard-working, steady man, called an attorney-general, or a sergeant, or a leading counsel, quietly talking over a matter of law with the judge, or a matter of fact with the jury, like men of business as they are, and shunning, as they would a rattlesnake, all clap-trap arguments, figures, flowers, and the obsolete embroidery of rhetoric?

The days of romantic eloquence are fled—the great constitutional questions that called forth "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," from men like Erskine, are determined. Would you have men oratorical over a bottomry bond, Demosthenic about an action of trespass on the case, or a rule to compute?

To be sure, when Follett practised before committees of the House of Commons, and, by chance, any question involving points of interest and difficulty in Parliamentary law and practice came before the Court, there was something worth hearing: the opportunity drew out the man, and the orator stepped before the advocate. Even now, sometimes, it is quite refreshing to get a topic in these Courts worthy of Austin, and Austin working at it. But no man need go to look for orators in our ordinary courts of law; judgment, patience, reading, and that rare compound of qualities known and appreciated by the name of tact, tell with judges, and influence juries; the days of palaver are gone, and the talking heroes extinguished for ever.

All this is well known in London; but the three or four millions (it may be five) of great men, philosophers, poets, orators, patriots, and the like, in the rural districts, require to be informed of this our declension from the heroics, in order to appreciate, or at least to understand, the modesty, sobriety, business-like character, and division of labour, in the vast amount of talent abounding in every department of life in London.

London overflows with talent. You may compare it, for the purpose of illustration, to one of George Robins' patent filters, into which pours turbid torrents of Thames water, its sediment, mud, dirt, weeds, and rottenness; straining through the various strata, its grosser particles are arrested in their course, and nothing that is not pure, transparent, and limpid is transmitted. In the great filter of London life, conceit, pretension, small provincial abilities, pseudo-talent, soi-disant intellect, are tried, rejected, and flung out again. True genius is tested by judgment, fastidiousness, emulation, difficulty, privation; and, passing through many ordeals, persevering, makes its way through all; and at length, in the fulness of time, flows forth, in acknowledged purity and refinement, upon the town.

There is a perpetual onward, upward tendency in the talent, both high and low, mechanical and intellectual, that abounds in London:

who are ever and always following fast upon your heels. There is no time to dawdle or linger on the road, no "stop and go on again:" if you but step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your place is occupied—you are edged off, pushed out of the main current, and condemned to circle slowly in the lazy eddy of some complimenting clique. Thousands are to be found, anxious and able to take your place; while hardly one misses you, or turns his head to look after you should you lose your own: you live but while you labour, and are no longer remembered than while you are reluctant to repose.

Talent of all kinds brings forth perfect fruits, only when concentrated upon one object: no matter how versatile men may be, mankind has a wise and salutary prejudice against diffused talent; for although knowledge diffused immortalizes itself, diffused talent is but a shallow pool, glittering in the noonday sun, and soon evaporated; concentrated, it is a well, from whose depths perpetually may we draw the limpid waters. Therefore is the talent of London concentrated, and the division of labour minute. When we talk of a lawyer, a doctor, a man of letters, in a provincial place, we recognize at once a man who embraces all that his opportunities present him with, in whatever department of his profession. The lawyer is, at one and the same time, advocate, chamber counsel, conveyancer, pleader; the doctor an accoucheur, apothecary, physician, surgeon, dentist, or at least, in a greater or less degree, unites in his own person, these—in London, distinct and separate—professions, according as his sphere of action is narrow or extended; the country journalist is sometimes proprietor, editor, sub-editor, traveller, and canvasser, or two or more of these heterogeneous and incompatible avocations. The result is, an obvious, appreciable, and long-established superiority in that product which is the result of minutely divided labour.

The manufacture of a London watch or piano will employ, each, at least twenty trades, exclusive of the preparers, importers, and venders of the raw material used in these articles; every one of these tradesmen shall be nay, must be, the best of their class, or at least the best that can be obtained; and for this purpose, the inducements of high wages are held out to workmen generally, and their competition for employment enables the manufacturer to secure the most skilful. It is just the same with a broken-down constitution, or a lawsuit: the former shall be placed under the care of a lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor, a dropsy-doctor, or whatever other doctor is supposed best able to understand the case; each of these doctors shall have read lectures and published books, and made himself known for his study and exclusive attention to one of the "thousand ills that flesh is heir to:" the latter shall go through the hands of dozens of men skilful in that branch of the law connected with the particular injury. So it is with every thing else of production, mechanical or intellectual, or both, that London affords: the extent of the market permits the minute division of labour, and the minute division of labour reacts upon the market, raising the price of its produce, and branding it with the signs of a legitimate superiority.

Hence the superior intelligence of working men, of all classes, high and low, in the World of London; hence that striving after excellence, that never-ceasing tendency to advance in whatever they are engaged in, that so distinguishes the people of this wonderful place; hence the improvements of to-day superseded by the improvements of to-morrow; hence speculation, enterprize, unknown to the inhabitants of less extended spheres of action.

Competition, emulation, and high wages give us an aristocracy of talent, genius, skill, tact, or whatever you like to call it; but you are by no means to understand that any of these aristocracies, or better classes, stand prominently before their fellows socially, or, that one is run after in preference to another; nobody runs after anybody in the World of London.

In this respect, no capital, no country on the face of the earth, resembles us; every where else you will find a leading class, giving a tone to society, and moulding it in some one or other direction; a predominating set, the pride of those who are in, the envy of those who are below it. There is nothing of this kind in London; here every man has his own set, and every man his proper pride. In every set, social or professional, there are great names, successful men, prominent; but the set is nothing the greater for them: no man sheds any lustre upon his fellows, nor is a briefless barrister a whit more thought of because he and Lyndhurst are of the same profession.

Take a look at other places: in money-getting places, you find society following, like so many dogs, the aristocracy of 'Change: every man knows the worth of every other man, that is to say, what he is worth.

A good man, elsewhere a relative term, is there a man good for so much; hats are elevated and bodies depressed upon a scale of ten thousand pounds to an inch; "I hope you are well," from one of the aristocracy of these places is always translated to mean, "I hope you are solvent," and "how d'ye do?" from another, is equivalent to "doing a bill."

Go abroad, to Rome for example—You are smothered beneath the petticoats of an ecclesiastical aristocracy. Go to the northern courts of Europe—You are ill-received, or perhaps not received at all, save in military uniform; the aristocracy of the epaulet meets you at every turn, and if you are not at least an ensign of militia, you are nothing. Make your way into Germany—What do you find there? an aristocracy of functionaries, mobs of nobodies living upon everybodies; from Herr Von, Aulic councillor, and Frau Von, Aulic councilloress, down to Herr Von, crossing-sweeper, and Frau Von, crossing-sweeperess—for the women there must be better-half even in their titles—you find society led, or, to speak more correctly, society consisting of functionaries, and they, every office son of them, and their wives—nay, their very curs—alike insolent and dependent. "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see they bark at me!" There, to get into society, you must first get into a place: you must contrive to be the servant of the public before you are permitted to be the master: you must be paid by, before you are in a condition to despise, the canaille.

Passing Holland and Belgium as more akin to the genius of the English people, as respects the supremacy of honest industry, its independent exercise, and the comparative insignificance of aristocracies, conventionally so called, we come to FRANCE: there we find a provincial and a Parisian aristocracy—the former a servile mob of placemen, one in fifty, at least, of the whole population; and the latter—oh! my poor head, what a clanjaffrey of journalistes, feuilletonistes, artistes, dramatists, novelists, vaudivellistes, poets, literary ladies, lovers of literary ladies, hommes de lettres, claqueurs, littérateurs, gérants, censeurs, rapporteurs, and le diable boiteux verily knows what else!

These people, with whom, or at least with a great majority of whom, common sense, sobriety of thought, consistency of purpose, steady determination in action, and sound reasoning, are so sadly eclipsed by their vivacity, empressement, prejudice, and party zeal, form a prominent, indeed, the prominent aristocracy of the salons: and only conceive what must be the state of things in France, when we know that Paris acts upon the provinces, and that Paris is acted upon by this foolscap aristocracy, without station, or, what is perhaps worse, enjoying station without property; abounding in maddening and exciting influences, but lamentably deficient in those hard-headed, ungenius-like qualities of patience, prudence, charity, forbearance, and peace-lovings, of which their war-worn nation, more than any other in Europe, stands in need.

When, in the name of goodness, is the heart of the philanthropist to be gladdened with the desire of peace fulfilled over the earth? When are paltry family intrigues to cease, causing the blood of innocent thousands to be shed? When will the aristocracy of genius in France give over jingling, like castanets, their trashy rhymes "gloire" and "victoire," and apply themselves to objects worthy of creatures endowed with the faculty of reason? Or, if they must have fighting, if it is their nature, if the prime instinct with them is the thirst of human blood, how cowardly, how paltry, is it to hound on their fellow-countrymen to war with England, to war with Spain, to war with every body, while snug in their offices, doing their little best to bleed nations with their pen!

Why does not the foolscap aristocracy rush forth, inkhorn in hand, and restore the glories (as they call them) of the Empire, nor pause till they mend their pens victorious upon the brink of the Rhine.

To resume: the aristocracies of our provincial capitals are those of literature in the one, and lickspittling in the other: mercantile towns have their aristocracies of money, or muckworm aristocracies: Rome has an ecclesiastical—Prussia, Russia, military aristocracies: Germany, an aristocracy of functionaries: France has two, or even three, great aristocracies—the military, place-hunting, and foolscap.

Now, then, attend to what we are going to say: London is cursed with no predominating, no overwhelming, no characteristic aristocracy. There is no set or clique of any sort or description of men that you can point to, and say, that's the London set. We turn round and desire to be informed what set do you mean: every salon has its set, and every pot-house its set also; and the frequenters of each set are neither envious of the position of the other, nor dissatisfied with their own: the pretenders to fashion, or hangers-on upon the outskirts of high life, are alone the servile set, or spaniel set, who want the proper self-respecting pride which every distinct aristocracy maintains in the World of London.

We are a great firmament, a moonless azure, glowing with stars of all magnitudes, and myriads of nebulæ of no magnitudes at all: we move harmoniously in our several orbits, minding our own business, satisfied with our position, thinking, it may be, with harmless vanity, that we bestow more light upon earth than any ten, and that the eyes of all terrestrial stargazers are upon us. Adventurers, pretenders, and quacks, are our meteors, our auroræ, our comets, our falling-stars, shooting athwart our hemisphere, and exhaling into irretrievable darkness: our tuft-hunters are satellites of Jupiter, invisible to the naked eye: our clear frosty atmosphere that sets us all a-twinkling is prosperity, and we, too have our clouds that hide us from the eyes of men. The noonday of our own bustling time beholds us dimly; but posterity regards us as it were from the bottom of a well. Time, that exact observer, applies his micrometer to every one of us, determining our rank among celestial bodies without appeal and from time to time enrolling in his ephemeris such new luminaries as may be vouchsafed to the long succession of ages.

If there is one thing that endears London to men of superior order—to true aristocrats, no matter of what species, it is that universal equality of outward condition, that republicanism of everyday life, which pervades the vast multitudes who hum, and who drone, who gather honey, and who, without gathering, consume the products of this gigantic hive. Here you can never be extinguished or put out by any overwhelming interest.

Neither are we in London pushed to the wall by the two or three hundred great men of every little place. We are not invited to a main of small talk with the cock of his own dung-hill; we are never told, as a great favour, that Mr Alexander Scaldhead, the phrenologist, is to be there, and that we can have our "bumps" felt for nothing; or that the Chevalier Doembrownski (a London pickpocket in disguise) is expected to recite a Polish ode, accompanying himself on the Jew's harp; we are not bored with the misconduct of the librarian, who never has the first volume of the last new novel, or invited to determine whether Louisa Fitzsmythe or Angelina Stubbsville deserves to be considered the heroine; we are not required to be in raptures because Mrs Alfred Shaw or Clara Novello are expected, or to break our hearts with disappointment because they didn't come: the arrival, performances, and departure, of Ducrow's horses, or Wombwell's wild beasts, affect us with no extraordinary emotion; even Assizes time concerns most of us nothing.

Then, again, how vulgar, how commonplace in London is the aristocracy of wealth; of Mrs Grub, who, in a provincial town, keeps her carriage, and is at once the envy and the scandal of all the Ladies who have to proceed upon their ten toes, we wot not the existence. Mr Bill Wright, the banker, the respected, respectable, influential, twenty per cent Wright, in London is merely a licensed dealer in money; he visits at Camberwell Hill, or Hampstead Heath, or wherever other tradesmen of his class delight to dwell; his wife and daughters patronize the Polish balls, and Mr Bill Wright, jun., sports a stall at the (English) opera; we are not overdone by Mr Bill Wright, overcome by Mrs Bill Wright, or the Misses Bill Wright, nor overcrowed by Mr Bill Wright the younger: in a word, we don't care a crossed cheque for the whole Bill Wrightish connexion.

What are carriages, or carriage-keeping people in London? It is not here, as in the provinces, by their carriages shall you know them; on the contrary, the carriage of a duchess is only distinguishable from that of a parvenu, by the superior expensiveness and vulgarity of the latter.

The vulgarity of ostentatious wealth with us, defeats the end it aims at. That expense which is lavished to impress us with awe and admiration, serves only as a provocative to laughter, and inducement to contempt; where great wealth and good taste go together, we at once recognize the harmonious adaptation of means and ends; where they do not, all extrinsic and adventitious expenditure availeth its disbursers nothing.

What animal on earth was ever so inhumanly preposterous as a lord mayor's footman, and yet it takes sixty guineas, at the least, to make that poor lick-plate a common laughing-stock?

No, sir; in London we see into, and see through, all sorts of pretension: the pretension of wealth or rank, whatever kind of quackery and imposture. When I say we, I speak of the vast multitudes forming the educated, discriminating, and thinking classes of London life. We pass on to what a man is, over who he is, and what he has; and, with one of the most accurate observers of human character and nature to whom a man of the world ever sat for his portrait—the inimitable La Bruyere—when offended with the hollow extravagance of vulgar riches, we exclaim—"Tu te trompes, Philemon, si avec ce carrosse brillant, ce grand nombre de coquins qui te suivent, et ces six bêtes qui te trainent, tu penses qu'on t'en estime d'avantage: ou ecarte tout cet attirail qui t'est étranger, pour pénétrer jusq'a toi qui n'es qu'un fat."

In London, every man is responsible for himself, and his position is the consequence of his conduct. If a great author, for example, or artist, or politician, should choose to outrage the established rules of society in any essential particular, he is neglected and even shunned in his private, though he may be admired and lauded in his public capacity. Society marks the line between the public and the social man; and this line no eminence, not even that of premier minister of England, will enable a public man to confound.

Wherever you are invited in London to be introduced to a great man, by any of his parasites or hangers-on, you may be assured that your great man is no such thing; you may make up your mind to be presented to some quack, some hollow-skulled fellow, who makes up by little arts, small tactics, and every variety of puff, for the want of that inherent excellence which will enable him to stand alone. These gentlemen form the Cockney school proper of art, literature, the drama, every thing; and they go about seeking praise, as a goatsucker hunts insects, with their mouths wide open; they pursue their prey in troops, like Jackals, and like them, utter at all times a melancholy, complaining howl; they imagine that the world is in a conspiracy not to admire them, and they would bring an action against the world if they could. But as that is impossible, they are content to rail against the world in good set terms; they are always puffing in the papers, but in a side-winded way, yet you can trace them always at work, through the daily, weekly, monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention. They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears to the rest of mankind.

These are the men who cultivate extensive tracts of forehead, and are deeply versed in the effective display of depending ringlets and ornamental whiskers; they dress in black, with white chokers, and you will be sure to find a lot of them at evening parties of the middling sort of doctors, or the better class of boarding-houses.

This class numbers not merely literary men, but actors, artists, adventuring politicians, small scientifics, and a thousand others, who have not energy or endurance to work their way in solitary labour, or who feel that they do not possess the power to go alone.

Public men in London appear naked at the bar of public opinion; laced coats, ribands, embroidery, titles, avail nothing, because these things are common, and have the common fate of common things, to be cheaply estimated. The eye is satiated with them, they come like shadows, so depart; but they do not feed the eye of the mind; the understanding is not the better for such gingerbread; we are compelled to look out for some more substantial nutriment, and we try the inward man, and test his capacity. Instead of measuring his bumps, like a landsurveyor, we dissect his brain, like an anatomist; we estimate him, whether he be high or low, in whatever department of life, not by what he says he can do, or means to do, but by what he has done. By this test is every man of talent tried in London; this is his grand, his formal difficulty, to get the opportunity of showing what he can do, of being put into circulation, of having the chance of being tested, like a shilling, by the ring of the customer and the bite of the critic; for the opportunity, the chance to edge in, the chink to wedge in, the purchase whereon to work the length of his lever, he must be ever on the watch; for the sunshine blink of encouragement, the April shower of praise, he must await the long winter of "hope deferred" passing away. Patience, the courage of the man of talent, he must exert for many a dreary and unrewarded day; he must see the quack and the pretender lead an undiscerning public by the nose, and say nothing; nor must he exult when the too-long enduring public at length kicks the pretender and the quack into deserved oblivion. From many a door that will hereafter gladly open for him, he must be content to be presently turned away. Many a scanty meal, many a lonely and unfriended evening, in this vast wilderness, must he pass in trying on his armour, and preparing himself for the fight that he still believes will come, and in which his spirit, strong within him, tells him he must conquer. While the night yet shrouds him he must labour, and with patient, and happily for him, if, with religious hope, he watch the first faint glimmerings of the dawning day; for his day, if he is worthy to behold it, will come, and he will yet be recompensed "by that time and chance which happeneth to all." And if his heart fails him, and his coward spirit turns to flee, often as he sits, tearful, in the solitude of his chamber, will the remembrance of the early struggles of the immortals shame that coward spirit. The shade of the sturdy Johnson, hungering, dinnerless, will mutely reproach him for sinking thus beneath the ills that the "scholar's life assail." The kindly-hearted, amiable Goldsmith, pursued to the gates of a prison by a mercenary wretch who fattened upon the produce of that lovely mind, smiling upon him, will bid him be of good cheer. A thousand names, that fondly live in the remembrance of our hearts, will he conjure up, and all will tell the same story of early want, and long neglect, and lonely friendlessness. Then will reproach himself, saying, "What am I, that I should quail before the misery that broke not minds like these? What am I, that I should be exempt from the earthly fate of the immortals?"

Nor marvel, then, that men who have passed the fiery ordeal, whose power has been tried and not found wanting, whose nights of probation, difficulty, and despair are past, and with whom it is now noon, should come forth, with deportment modest and subdued, exempt from the insolent assumption of vulgar minds, and their yet more vulgar hostilities and friendships: that such men as Campbell and Rogers, and a thousand others in every department of life and letters, should partake of that quietude of manner, that modesty of deportment, that compassion for the unfortunate of their class, that unselfish admiration for men who, successful, have deserved success, that abomination of cliques, coteries, and conversazionés, and all the littleness of inferior fry: that such men should have parasites, and followers, and hangers-on; or that, since men like themselves are few and far between, they should live for and with such men alone.

But thou, O Vanity! thou curse, thou shame, thou sin, with what tides of pseudo talent hast thou not filled this ambitious town? Ass, dolt, miscalculator, quack, pretender, how many hast thou befooled, thou father of multifarious fools? Serpent, tempter, evil one, how many hast thou seduced from the plough tail, the carpenter's bench, the schoolmaster's desk, the rural scene, to plunge them into misery and contempt in this, the abiding-place of their betters, thou unhanged cheat? Hence the querulous piping against the world and the times, and the neglect of genius, and appeals to posterity, and damnation of managers, publishers, and the public; hence cliques, and claqueurs, and coteries, and the would-if-I-could-be aristocracy of letters; hence bickerings, quarellings, backbitings, slanderings, and reciprocity of contempt; hence the impossibility of literary union, and the absolute necessity imposed upon the great names of our time of shunning, like a pestilence, the hordes of vanity-struck individuals who would tear the coats off their backs in desperate adherence to the skirts. Thou, too, O Vanity! art responsible for greater evils:—Time misspent, industry misdirected, labour unrequited, because uselessly or imprudently applied: poverty and isolation, families left unprovided for, pensions, solicitations, patrons, meannesses, subscriptions!

True talent, on the contrary, in London, meets its reward, if it lives to be rewarded; but it has, of its own right, no social pre-eminence, nor is it set above or below any of the other aristocracies, in what we may take the liberty of calling its private life. In this, as in all other our aristocracies, men are regarded not as of their set, but as of themselves: they are individually admired, not worshipped as a congregation: their social influence is not aggregated, though their public influence may be. When a man, of whatever class, leaves his closet, he is expected to meet society upon equal terms: the scholar, the man of rank, the politician, the millionaire, must merge in the gentleman: if he chooses to individualize his aristocracy in his own person, he must do so at home, for it will not be understood or submitted to any where else.

The rewards of intellectual labour applied to purposes of remote, or not immediately appreciable usefulness, as in social literature, and the loftier branches of the fine arts, are, with us, so few, as hardly to be worth mentioning, and pity 'tis that it should be so. The law, the church, the army, and the faculty of physic, have not only their fair and legitimate remuneration for independent labour, but they have their several prizes, to which all who excel, may confidently look forward when the time of weariness and exhaustion shall come; when the pressure of years shall slacken exertion, and diminished vigour crave some haven of repose, or, at the least, some mitigated toil, with greater security of income: some place of honour with repose—the ambition of declining years. The influence of the great prize of the law, the church, and other professions in this country, has often been insisted upon with great reason: it has been said, and truly said, that not only do these prizes reward merit already passed through its probationary stages, but serve as inducements to all who are pursuing the same career. It is not so much the example of the prize-holder, as the prize, that stimulates men onward and upward: without the hope of reaching one of those comfortable stations, hope would be extinguished, talent lie fallow, energy be limited to the mere attainment of subsistence; great things would not be done, or attempted, and we would behold only a dreary level of indiscriminate mediocrity. If this be true of professions, in which, after a season of severe study, a term of probation, the knowledge acquired in early life sustains the professor, with added experience of every day, throughout the rest of his career, with how much more force will it apply to professions or pursuits, in which the mind is perpetually on the rack to produce novelties, and in which it is considered derogatory to a man to reproduce his own ideas, copy his own pictures, or multiply, after the same model, a variety of characters and figures!

A few years of hard reading, constant attention in the chambers of the conveyancer, the equity craftsman, the pleader, and a few years more of that disinterested observance of the practice of the courts, which is liberally afforded to every young barrister, and indeed which many enjoy throughout life, and he is competent, with moderate talent, to protect the interests of his client, and with moderate mental labour to make a respectable figure in his profession. In like manner, four or five years sedulous attendance on lectures, dissections, and practice of the hospitals, enables your physician to see how little remedial power exists in his boasted art; knowing this, he feels pulses, and orders a recognized routine of draughts and pills with the formality which makes the great secret of his profession. When the patient dies, nature, of course, bears the blame; and when nature, happily uninterfered with, recovers his patient, the doctor stands on tiptoe. Henceforward his success is determined by other than medical sciences: a pillbox and pair, a good house in some recognized locality, Sunday dinners, a bit of a book, grand power of head-shaking, shoulder-shrugging, bamboozling weak-minded men and women, and, if possible, a religious connexion.

For the clergyman, it is only necessary that he should be orthodox, humble, and pious; that he should on no occasion, right or wrong, set himself in opposition to his ecclesiastical superiors; that he should preach unpretending sermons; that he should never make jokes, nor understand the jokes of another: this is all that he wants to get on respectably. If he is ambitious, and wishes one of the great prizes, he must have been a free-thinking reviewer, have written pamphlets, or made a fuss about the Greek particle, or, what will avail him more than all, have been tutor to a minister of state.

Thus you perceive, for men whose education is intellectual, but whose practice is more or less mechanical, you have many great, intermediate, and little prizes in the lottery of life; but where, on the contrary, are the prizes for the historian, transmitting to posterity the events, and men, and times long since past; where the prize of the analyst of mind, of the dramatic, the epic, or the lyric poet, the essayist, and all whose works are likely to become the classics of future times; where the prize of the public journalist, who points the direction of public opinion, and, himself without place, station, or even name, teaches Governments their duty, and prevents Ministers of State becoming, by hardihood or ignorance, intolerable evils; where the prize of the great artist, who has not employed himself making faces for hire, but who has worked in loneliness and isolation, living, like Barry, upon raw apples and cold water, that he might bequeath to his country some memorial worthy the age in which he lived, and the art for which he lived? For these men, and such as these, are no prizes in the lottery of life; a grateful country sets apart for them no places where they can retire in the full enjoyment of their fame; condemned to labour for their bread, not in a dull mechanical routine of professional, official, or business-like duties, but in the most severe, most wearing of all labour, the labour of the brain, they end where they begun. With struggling they begin life, with struggling they make their way in life, with struggling they end life; poverty drives away friends, and reputation multiplies enemies. The man whose thoughts will become the thoughts of our children, whose minds will be reflected in the mirror of his mind, who will store in their memories his household words, and carry his lessons in their hearts, dies not unwillingly, for he has nothing in life to look forward to; closes with indifference his eyes on a prospect where no gleam of hope sheds its sunlight on the broken spirit; he dies, is borne by a few humble friends to a lowly sepulchre, and the newspapers of some days after give us the following paragraph:—

"We regret to be obliged to state that Dr ——, or —— ——, Esq. (as the case may be) died, on Saturday last at his lodgings two pair back in Back Place, Pimlico, (or) at his cottage (a miserable cabin where he retired to die) at Kingston-upon-Thames. It is our melancholy duty to inform our readers that this highly gifted and amiable man, who for so many years delighted and improved the town, and who was a most strenuous supporter of the (Radical or Conservative) cause, (it is necessary to set forth this miserable statement to awaken the gratitude of faction towards the family of the dead,) has left a rising family totally unprovided for. We are satisfied that it is only necessary to allude to this distressing circumstance, in order to enlist the sympathies, &c. &c., (in short, to get up a subscription)."

We confess we are at a loss to understand why the above advertisement should be kept stereotyped, to be inserted with only the interpolation of name and date, when any man dies who has devoted himself to pursuits of a purely intellectual character. Nor are we unable to discover in the melancholy, and, as it would seem, unavoidable fates of such men, substantial grounds of that diversion of the aristocracy of talent to the pursuit of professional distinction, accompanied by profit, of which our literature, art, and science are now suffering, and will continue to suffer, the consequences.

In a highly artificial state of society, where a command, not merely of the essentials, but of some of the superfluities of life are requisite as passports to society, no man will willingly devote himself to pursuits which will render him an outlaw, and his family dependent on the tardy gratitude of an indifferent world. The stimulus of fame will be inadequate to maintain the energies even of great minds, in a contest of which the victories are wreaths of barren bays. Nor will any man willingly consume the morning of his days in amassing intellectual treasures for posterity, when his contemporaries behold him dimming with unavailing tears his twilight of existence, and dying with the worse than deadly pang, the consciousness that those who are nearest and dearest to his heart must eat the bread of charity. Nor is it quite clear to our apprehension, that the prevalent system of providing for merely intellectual men, by a State annuity or pension, is the best that can be devised: it is hard that the pensioned aristocracy of talent should be exposed to the taunt of receiving the means of their subsistence from this or that minister, upon suppositions of this or that ministerial assistance which, whether true or false, cannot fail to derogate from that independent dignity of mind which is never extinguished in the breast of the true aristocrat of talent, save by unavailing struggles, long-continued, with the unkindness of fortune.

We wish the aristocracy of power to think over this, and so very heartily bid them farewell.

THE LOST LAMB.

BY DELTA.

A shepherd laid upon his bed,

With many a sigh, his aching head,

For him—his favourite boy—on whom

Had fallen death, a sudden doom.

"But yesterday," with sobs he cried,

"Thou wert, with sweet looks, at my side,

Life's loveliest blossom, and to-day,

Woes me! thou liest a thing of clay!

It cannot be that thou art gone;

It cannot be, that now, alone,

A grey-hair'd man on earth am I,

Whilst thou within its bosom lie?

Methinks I see thee smiling there,

With beaming eyes, and sunny hair,

As thou were wont, when fondling me,

To clasp my neck from off my knee!

Was it thy voice? Again, oh speak,

My boy, or else my heart will break!"

Each adding to that father's woes,

A thousand bygone scenes arose;

At home—a field—each with its joy,

Each with its smile—and all his boy!

Now swell'd his proud rebellious breast,

With darkness and with doubt opprest;

Now sank despondent, while amain

Unnerving tears fell down like rain:

Air—air—he breathed, yet wanted breath—

It was not life—it was not death—

But the drear agony between,

Where all is heard, and felt, and seen—

The wheels of action set ajar;

The body with the soul at war.

'Twas vain, 'twas vain; he could not find

A haven for his shipwreck'd mind;

Sleep shunn'd his pillow. Forth he went—

The noon from midnight's azure tent

Shone down, and, with serenest light,

Flooded the windless plains of night;

The lake in its clear mirror show'd

Each little star that twinkling glow'd;

Aspens, that quiver with a breath,

Were stirless in that hush of death;

The birds were nestled in their bowers;

The dewdrops glitter'd on the flowers;

Almost it seem'd as pitying Heaven

A while its sinless calm had given

To lower regions, lest despair

Should make abode for ever there;

So tranquil—so serene—so bright—

Brooded o'er earth the wings of night.

O'ershadow'd by its ancient yew,

His sheep-cot met the shepherd's view;

And, placid, in that calm profound,

His silent flocks lay slumbering round:

With flowing mantle, by his side,

Sudden, a stranger he espied,

Bland was his visage, and his voice

Soften'd the heart, yet bade rejoice.—

"Why is thy mourning thus?" he said,

"Why thus doth sorrow bow thy head?

Why faltereth thus thy faith, that so

Abroad despairing thou dost go?

As if the God who gave thee breath,

Held not the keys of life and death!

When from the flocks that feed about,

A single lamb thou choosest out,

Is it not that which seemeth best

That thou dost take, yet leave the rest?

Yes! such thy wont; and, even so,

With his choice little ones below

Doth the Good Shepherd deal; he breaks

Their earthly bands, and homeward takes,

Early, ere sin hath render'd dim

The image of the seraphim!"

Heart-struck, the shepherd home return'd;

Again within his bosom burn'd

The light of faith; and, from that day,

He trode serene life's onward way.

COMTE.

It is pleasant to find in some extreme, uncompromising, eccentric work, written for the complete renovation of man, a new establishment of truth, little else, after all its tempest of thought has swept over the mind, than another confirmation of old, and long-settled, and temperate views. Our sober philosophy, like some familiar landscape seen after a thunder storm, comes out but the more distinct, the brighter, and the more tranquil, for the bursting cloud and the windy tumult that had passed over its surface. Some such experience have we just had. Our Conservative principles, our calm and patient manner of viewing things, have rarely received a stronger corroboration than from the perusal or the extraordinary work of M. Comte—a work written, assuredly, for no such comfortable purpose, but for the express object (so far as we can at present state it to our readers) of re-organizing political society, by means of an intellectual reformation amongst political thinkers.

We would not be thought to throw an idle sneer at those generous hopes of the future destiny of society which have animated some of the noblest and most vigorous minds. It is no part of a Conservative philosophy to doubt on the broad question of the further and continuous improvement of mankind. Nor will the perusal of M. Comte's work induce, or permit, such a doubt. But while he leaves with his reader a strong impression of the unceasing development of social man, he leaves a still stronger impression of the futile or mischievous efforts of those—himself amongst the number—who are thrusting themselves forward as the peculiar and exclusive advocates of progress and improvement. He exhibits himself in the attitude of an innovator, as powerless in effect as he is daring to design; whilst, at the same time, he deals a crashing blow (as upon rival machinators) on that malignant party in European politics, whether it call itself liberal or of the movement, whose most distinct aim seems to be to unloose men from the bonds of civil government. We, too, believe in the silent, irresistible progress of human society, but we believe also that he is best working for posterity, as well as for the welfare of his contemporaries, who promotes order and tranquil effort in his own generation, by means of those elements of order which his own generation supplies.

That which distinguishes M. Comte's work from all other courses of philosophy, or treatises upon science, is the attempt to reduce to the scientific method of cogitation the affairs of human society—morality, politics; in short, all those general topics which occupy our solitary and perplexed meditation, or sustain the incessant strife of controversy. These are to constitute a new science, to be called Social Physics, or Sociology. To apply the Baconian, or, as it is here called, the positive method, to man in all phases of his existence—to introduce the same fixed, indissoluble, imperturbable order in our ideas of morals, politics, and history, that we attain to astronomy and mechanics, is the bold object of his labours. He does not here set forth a model of human society based on scientific conclusions; something of this kind is promised us in a future work; in the present undertaking he is especially anxious to compel us to think on all such topics in the scientific method, and in no other. For be it known, that science is not only weak in herself, and has been hitherto incompetent to the task of unravelling the complicate proceedings of humanity, but she has also a great rival in the form of theologic method, wherein the mind seeks a solution for its difficulties in a power above nature. The human being has contracted an inveterate habit of viewing itself as standing in a peculiar relation to a supreme Architect and Governor of the world—a habit which in many ways, direct and indirect, interferes, it seems, with the application of the positive method. This habit is to be corrected; such supreme Architect and Governor is to be dismissed from the imagination of men; science is to supply the sole mode of thought, and humanity to be its only object.

We have called M. Comte's an extraordinary book, and this is an epithet which our readers are already fully prepared to apply. But the book, in our judgment, is extraordinary in more senses than one. It is as remarkable for the great mental energy it displays, for its originality and occasional profundity of thought, as it is for the astounding conclusions to which it would conduct us, for its bold paradoxes, and for what we can designate no otherwise than its egregious errors. As a discipline of the mind, so far as a full appreciation is concerned of the scientific method, it cannot be read without signal advantage. The book is altogether an anomaly; exhibiting the strangest mixture that ever mortal work betrayed of manifold blunder and great intellectual power. The man thinks at times with the strength of a giant. Neither does he fail, as we have already gathered, in the rebellious and destructive propensities for which giants have been of old renowned. Fable tells us how they could have no gods to reign over them, and how they threatened to drive Jupiter himself from the skies. Our intellectual representative of the race nourishes designs of equal temerity. Like his earth-born predecessors, his rage, we may be sure, will be equally vain. No thunder will be heard, neither will the hills move to overwhelm him; but in due course of time he will lie down, and be covered up with his own earth, and the heavens will be as bright and stable as before, and still the abode of the same unassailable Power.

For the style of M. Comte's work, it is not commendable. The philosophical writers of his country are in general so distinguished for excellence in this particular, their exposition of thought is so remarkably felicitous, that a failure in a Frenchman in the mere art of writing, appears almost as great an anomaly as any of the others which characterize this production. During the earlier volumes, which are occupied with a review of the recognized branches of science, the vices of style are kept within bounds, but after he has entered on what is the great subject of all his lucubrations, his social physics, they grow distressingly conspicuous. The work extends to six volumes, some of them of unusually large capacity; and by the time we arrive at the last and the most bulky, the style, for its languor, its repetitions, its prolixity, has become intolerable.

Of a work of this description, distinguished by such bold features, remarkable for originality and subtlety, as well as for surprising hardihood and eccentricity of thought, and bearing on its surface a manner of exposition by no means attractive, we imagine that our readers will not be indisposed to receive some notice. Its errors—supposing we are capable of coping with them—are worthy of refutation. Moreover, as we have hinted, the impression it conveys is, in relation to politics, eminently Conservative; for, besides that he has exposed, with peculiar vigour, the utter inadequacy of the movement, or liberal party, to preside over the organization of society, there is nothing more calculated to render us content with an empirical condition of tolerable well-being, than the exhibition (and such, we think, is here presented to us) of a strong mind palpably at fault in its attempt to substitute, out of its own theory of man, a better foundation for the social structure than is afforded by the existing unphilosophical medley of human thought. Upon that portion of the Cours de Philosophie Positive which treats of the sciences usually so called, we do not intend to enter, nor do the general remarks we make apply to it. Our limited object is to place our reader at the point of view which M. Comte takes in his new science of Sociology; and to do this with any justice to him or to ourselves, in the space we can allot to the subject, will be a task of sufficient difficulty.

And first, as to the title of the work, Philosophie Positive, which has, perhaps, all this while been perplexing the reader. The reasons which induced M. Comte to adopt it, shall be given in his own words; they could not have been appreciated until some general notion had been given of the object he had in view.

This very announcement of M. Comte's intention to comprehend in his course of natural philosophy the study of the several phenomena, compels us to enquire how far these are fit subjects for the strict application of the scientific method. We waive the metaphysical question of the free agency of man, and the theological question of the occasional interference of the Divine Power; and presuming these to be decided in a manner favourable to the project of our Sociologist, we still ask if it be possible to make of the affairs of society—legislation and politics, for instance—a department of science?

The mere multiplicity and complication of facts in this department of enquiry, have been generally regarded as rendering such an attempt hopeless. In any social problem of importance, we invariably feel that to embrace the whole of the circumstances, with all their results and dependencies, is really out of our power, and we are forced to content ourselves with a judgment formed on what appear to us the principal facts. Thus arise those limited truths, admitting of exceptions, of qualification, of partial application, on which we are fain to rely in the conduct of human affairs. In framing his measures, how often is the statesman, or the jurist, made aware of the utter impossibility of guarding them against every species of objection, or of so constructing them that they shall present an equal front on every side! How still more keenly is the speculative politician made to feel, when giving in his adherence to some great line of policy, that he cannot gather in under his conclusions all the political truths he is master of! He reluctantly resigns to his opponent the possession, or at least the usufruct, of a certain class of truths which he is obliged to postpone to others of more extensive or more urgent application.

But this multiplicity and complication of facts may merely render the task of the Sociologist extremely difficult, not impossible; and the half truths, and the perplexity of thought above alluded to, may only prove that his scientific task has not yet been accomplished. Nothing is here presented in the nature of the subject to exclude the strict application of the method. There is, however, one essential, distinctive attribute of human society which constitutes a difference in the nature of the subject, so as to render impossible the same scientific survey and appreciation of the social phenomena of the world that we may expect to obtain of the physical. This is the gradual and incessant developement which humanity has displayed, and is still displaying. Who can tell us that that experience on which a fixed and positive theory of social man is to be formed, is all before us? From age to age that experience is enlarging.

In all recognized branches of science nature remains the same, and continually repeats herself; she admits of no novelty; and what appears new to us, from our late discovery of it, is as old as the most palpable sequence of facts that, generation after generation, catches the eye of childhood. The new discovery may disturb our theories, it disturbs not the condition of things. All is still the same as it ever was. What we possessed of real knowledge is real knowledge still. We sit down before a maze of things bewildering enough; but the vast mechanism, notwithstanding all its labyrinthian movements, is constant to itself, and presents always the same problem to the observer. But in this department of humanity, in this sphere of social existence, the case is otherwise. The human being, with hand, with intellect, is incessantly at work—has a progressive movement—grows from age to age. He discovers, he invents, he speculates; his own inventions react upon the inventor; his own thoughts, creeds, speculations, become agents in the scene. Here new facts are actually from time to time starting into existence; new elements are introduced into society, which science could not have foreseen; for if they could have been foreseen, they would already have been there. A new creed, even a new machine, may confound the wisest of speculations. Man is, in relation to the science that would survey society, a creator. In short, that stability in the order of events, that invariable recurrence of the same linked series, on which science depends for its very existence, here, in some measure, fails us. In such degree, therefore, as humanity can be described as progressive, or developing itself, in such degree is it an untractable subject for the scientific method. We have but one world, but one humanity before us, but one specimen of this self developing creature, and that perhaps but half grown, but half developed. How can we know whereabouts we are in our course, and what is coming next? We want the history of some extinguished world in which a humanity has run its full career; we need to extend our observation to other planets peopled with similar but variously developed inhabitants, in order scientifically to understand such a race as ours.

What, for example, could be more safely stated as an eternal law of society than that of property?—a law which so justly governs all our political reasonings, and determines the character of our political measures the most prospective—a law which M. Comte has not failed himself to designate as fundamental. And yet, by what right of demonstration can we pronounce this law to be inherent in humanity, so that it shall accompany the race during every stage of its progress? That industry should be rewarded by a personal, exclusive property in the fruits of industry, is the principle consecrated by our law of property, and to which the spontaneous passions of mankind have in all regions of the earth conducted. Standing where we do, and looking out as far as our intellectual vision can extend, we pronounce it to be the basis of society; but if we added that, as long as the world lasts, it must continue to be the basis of society, that there are no elements in man to furnish forth, if circumstances favoured their development, a quite different principle for the social organization, we feel that we should be overstepping the modest bounds of truth, and stating our proposition in terms far wider and more absolute than we were warranted. Experiments have been made, and a tendency has repeatedly been manifested, to frame an association of men in which the industry of the individual should have its immediate reward and motive in the participated prosperity of the general body—where the good of the whole should be felt as the interest of each. How such a principle is to be established, we confess ourselves utterly at a loss to divine; but that no future events unforeseen by us, no unexpected modification of the circumstances affecting human character, shall ever develop and establish such a principle—this is what no scientific mind would venture to assert. Our knowledge is fully commensurate to our sphere of activity, nor need it, nor can it, pass beyond that sphere. We know that the law of property now forms the basis of society; we know that an attempt to abrogate it would be the signal for war and anarchy, and we know this also, that at no time can its opposite principle be established by force, because its establishment will require a wondrous harmony in the social body; and a civil war, let the victory fall where it may, must leave mankind full of dissension, rancour, and revenge. Our convictions, therefore, for all practical purposes, can receive no confirmation. If the far future is to be regulated by different principles, of what avail the knowledge of them, or how can they be intelligible to us, to whom are denied the circumstances necessary for their establishment, and for the demonstration of their reasonableness?

"The great Aristotle himself," says M. Comte, speaking of the impossibility of any man elevating himself above the circumstances of his age—"The great Aristotle himself, the profoundest thinker of ancient times, (la plus forte tête de toute l'antiquité,) could not conceive of a state of society not based on slavery, the irrevocable abolition of which commenced a few generations afterwards."—Vol. iv. p.38. In the sociology of Aristotle, slavery would have been a fundamental law.

There is another consideration, not unworthy of being mentioned, which bears upon this matter. In one portion of M. Comte's work, (we cannot now lay our hand upon the passage,) the question comes before him of the comparative happiness of the savage and the civilized man. He will not entertain it, refuses utterly to take cognizance of the question, and contents himself with asserting the fuller development of his nature displayed by the civilized man. M. Comte felt that science had no scale for this thing happiness. It was not ponderable, nor measurable, nor was there an uniformity of testimony to be collected thereon. How many of our debates and controversies terminate in a question of this kind—of the comparative happiness of two several conditions? Such questions are, for the most part, practically decided by those who have to feel; but to estimate happiness by and for the feelings of others, would be the task of science. Some future Royal Society must be called upon to establish a standard measure for human felicity.

We are speaking, it will be remembered, of the production of a science. A scientific discipline of mind is undoubtedly available in the examination of social questions, and may be of eminent utility to the moralist, the jurist, and the politician—though it is worthy of observation that even the habit of scientific thought, if not in some measure tempered to the occasion, may display itself very inconveniently and prejudicially in the determination of such questions. Our author, for instance, after satisfying himself that marriage is a fundamental law of society, is incapable of tolerating any infraction whatever of this law in the shape of a divorce. He would give to it the rigidity of a law of mechanics; he finds there should be cohesion here, and he will not listen to a single case of separation: forgetful that a law of society may even be the more stable for admitting exceptions which secure for it the affection of those by whom it is to be reverenced and obeyed.

With relation to the past, and in one point of view—namely, so far as regards the development of man in his speculative career—our Sociologist has endeavoured to supply a law which shall meet the peculiar exigencies of his case, and enable him to take a scientific survey of the history of a changeful and progressive being. At the threshold of his work we encounter the announcement of a new law, which has regulated the development of the human mind from its rudest state of intellectual existence. As this law lies at the basis of M. Comte's system—as it is perpetually referred to throughout his work—as it is by this law he proceeds to view history in a scientific manner—as, moreover, it is by aid of this law that he undertakes to explain the provisional existence of all theology, explaining it in the past, and removing it from the future—it becomes necessary to enter into some examination of its claims, and we must request our readers' attention to the following statement of it:—

After some very just, and indeed admirable, observations on the necessity, or extreme utility, of a theologic hypothesis at an early period of mental development, in order to promote any systematic thought whatever, he proceeds thus:—

We need hardly say that we enter our protest against the supposition that theology is not the last, as well as the first, of our forms of thought—against the assertion that is here, and throughout the work, made or implied, that the scientific method, rigidly applied in its appropriate field of enquiry, would be found incompatible with the great argument of an intelligent Cause, and would throw the whole subject of theology out of the range of human knowledge. It would be superfluous for us to re-state that argument; and our readers would probably be more displeased to have presented before them a hostile view of this subject, though for the purpose only of controversy, than they would be edified by a repetition of those reasonings which have long since brought conviction to their minds. We will content ourselves, therefore, with this protest, and with adding—as a fact of experience, which, in estimating a law of development, may with peculiar propriety be insisted on—that hitherto no such incompatibility has made itself evident. Hitherto science, or the method of thinking, which its cultivation requires and induces, has not shown itself hostile to the first great article of religion—that on which revelation proceeds to erect all the remaining articles of our faith. If it is a fact that, in rude times, men began their speculative career by assigning individual phenomena to the immediate causation of supernatural powers, it is equally a fact that they have hitherto, in the most enlightened times, terminated their inductive labours by assigning that unity and correlation which science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in this age to find a reflective man who does not read thought in this unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to see, in any one of the specialities around him, the direct interference of a spirit or demon. In our own country, men of science are rather to blame for a too detailed, a puerile and injudicious, manner of treating this great argument, than for any disposition to desert it.

Contenting ourselves with this protest, we proceed to the consideration of the new law. That there is, in the statement here made of the course pursued in the development of speculative thought, a measure of truth; and that, in several subjects, the course here indicated may be traced, will probably, by every one who reads the foregoing extracts, be at once admitted. But assuredly very few will read it without a feeling of surprise at finding what (under certain limitations) they would have welcomed in the form of a general observation, proclaimed to them as a law—a scientific law—which from its nature admits of no exception; at finding it stated that every branch of human knowledge must of necessity pass through these three theoretic stages. In the case of some branches of knowledge, it is impossible to point out what can be understood as its several theologic and metaphysic stages; and even in cases where M. Comte has himself applied these terms, it is extremely difficult to assign to them a meaning in accordance with that which they bear in this statement of his law; as, for instance, in his application of them to his own science of social physics. But we need not pause on this. What a palpable fallacy it is to suppose, because M. Comte find the positive and theologic methods incompatible, that, historically speaking, and in the minds of men, which certainly admit of stranger commixtures than this, they should "mutually exclude each other"—that, in short, men have not been all along, in various degrees and proportions, both theologic and positive.

What is it, we ask, that M. Comte means by the succession of these several stages or modes of thinking? Does he mean that what is here called the positive method of thought is not equally spontaneous to the human mind as the theological, but depends on it for its development? Hardly so. The predominance of the positive method, or its complete formation, may be postponed; but it clearly has an origin and an existence independent of the theological. No barbarian ever deified, or supernaturalized, every process around him; there must always have been a portion of his experience entertained merely as experience. The very necessity man has to labour for his subsistence, brings him into a practical acquaintance with the material world, which induces observation, and conducts towards a natural philosophy. If he is a theologian the first moment he gives himself up to meditation, he is on the road to the Baconian method the very day he begins to labour. The rudest workman uses the lever; the mathematician follows and calculates the law which determines the power it bestows; here we have industry and then science, but what room for the intervention of theology?

Or does M. Comte mean this only—which we presume to be the case—that these methods of thought are, in succession, predominant and brought to maturity? If so, what necessity for this metaphysic apparatus for the sole purpose of transition? If each of these great modes, the positive and theological, has its independent source, and is equally spontaneous—if they have, in fact, been all along contemporary, though in different stages of development, the function attributed to the metaphysic mode is utterly superfluous; there can be no place for it; there is no transition for it to operate. And what can be said of a law of succession in which there is no relation of cause and effect, or of invariable sequence, between the phenomena?

Either way the position of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are not equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature precede the other; then, besides that this is an unfounded supposition, it would follow—since the mind, or organization, of man remains from age to age the same in its fundamental powers—that, at this very time, no man could be inducted into the positive state of any branch of knowledge, without first going through its theologic and metaphysic. Truth must be expounded through a course of errors. Science must be eternally postponed, in every system of education, to theology, and a theology of the rudest description—a result certainly not contemplated by M. Comte. If, on the other hand, he intends that they are equally spontaneous in their character, equally native to the mind, then, we repeat, what becomes of the elaborate and "indispensable" part ascribed to the metaphysic of effectuating a transition between them? And how can we describe that as a scientific law in which there is confessedly no immediate relation of cause and effect, or sequency, established? The statement, if true, manifestly requires to be resolved into the law, or laws, capable of explaining it.

Perhaps our readers have all this while suspected that we are acting in a somewhat captious manner towards M. Comte; they have, perhaps, concluded that this author could not have here required their assent, strictly speaking, to a law, but that he used the term vaguely, as many writers have done—meaning nothing more by it than a course of events which has frequently been observed to take place; and under this impression they may be more disposed to receive the measure of truth contained in it than to cavil at the form of the statement. But indeed M. Comte uses the language of science in no such vague manner; he requires the same assent to this law that we give to any one of the recognized laws of science—to that of gravitation for instance, to which he himself likens it, pronouncing it, in a subsequent part of his work, to have been as incontrovertibly established. Upon this law, think what we may of it, M. Comte leans throughout all his progress; he could not possibly dispense with it; on its stability depends his whole social science; by it, as we have already intimated, he becomes master of the past and of the future; and an appreciation of its necessity to him, at once places us at that point of view from which M. Comte contemplates our mundane affairs.

It is his object to put the scientific method in complete possession of the whole range of human thought, especially of the department, hitherto unreduced to subjection, of social phenomena. Now there is a great rival in the field—theology—which, besides imparting its own supernatural tenets, influences our modes of thinking on almost all social questions. Theology cannot itself be converted into a branch of science; all those tenets by which it sways the hopes and fears of men are confessedly above the sphere of science: if science, therefore, is to rule absolutely, it must remove theology. But it can only remove by explaining; by showing how it came there, and how, in good time, it is destined to depart. If the scientific method is entirely to predominate, it must explain religion, as it must explain every thing that exists, or has existed; and it must also reveal the law of its departure—otherwise it cannot remain sole mistress of the speculative mind. Such is the office which the law of development we have just considered is intended to fulfil; how far it is capable of accomplishing its purpose we must now leave our readers to decide.

Having thus, as he presumes, cleared the ground for the absolute and exclusive dominion of the positive method, M. Comte proceeds to erect the hierarchy, as he very descriptively calls it, of the several sciences. His classification of these is based on the simplest and most intelligible principle. We think that we rather add to, than diminish from, the merits of this classification, when we say, that it is such as seems spontaneously to arise to any reflective mind engaged in a review of human knowledge. Commencing with the most simple, general, and independent laws, it proceeds to those which are more complicated, which presume the existence of other laws; in such manner that at every stage of our scientific progress we are supporting ourselves on the knowledge acquired in the one preceding.

The principle of classification is excellent, but is there no rank dropt out of this hierarchy? The metaphysicians, or psychologists, who are wont to consider themselves as standing at the very summit—where are they? They are dismissed from their labours—their place is occupied by others—and what was considered as having substance and reality in their proceedings, is transferred to the head of physiology. The phrenologist is admitted into the hierarchy of science as an honest, though hitherto an unpractised, and not very successful labourer; the metaphysician, with his class of internal observations, is entirely scouted. M. Comte considers the mind as one of those abstract entities which it is the first business of the positive philosophy to discard. He speaks of man, of his organization, of his thought, but not, scientifically, of his mind. This entity, this occult cause, belongs to the metaphysic stage of theorizing. "There is no place," he cries, "for this illusory psychology, the last transformation of theology!"—though, by the way, so far as a belief in this abstract entity of mind is concerned, the metaphysic condition of our knowledge appears to be quite as old, quite as primitive, as any conception whatever of theology. Now, whether M. Comte be right in this preference of the phrenologist, we will not stay to discuss—it were too wide a question; but thus much we can briefly and indisputably show, that he utterly misconceives, as well as underrates, the kind of research to which psychologists are addicted. As M. Comte's style is here unusually vivacious, we will quote the whole passage. Are we uncharitable in supposing that the prospect of demolishing, at one fell swoop, the brilliant reputations of a whole class of Parisian savans, added something to the piquancy of the style?

They seem transferred to the stage already—so completely burlesqued is the whole process on which the psychologist bases his results. He does not pretend to observe the mind itself; but he says, you can remember previous states of consciousness, whether of passion or of intellectual effort, and pay renewed attention to them. And assuredly there is no difficulty in understanding this. When, indeed, M. Cousin, after being much perplexed with the problem which Kant had thrown out to him, of objective and subjective truth, comes back to the public and tells them, in a second edition of his work, that he has succeeded in discovering, in the inmost recesses of the mind, and at a depth of the consciousness to which neither he nor any other had before been able to penetrate, this very sense of the absolute in truth of which he was in search—something very like the account which M. Conte gives, may be applicable. But when M. Cousin, or other psychologists, in the ordinary course of their investigations, observe mental phenomena, they simply pay attention to what memory brings them of past experiences; observations which are not only a legitimate source of knowledge, but which are continually made, with more or less accuracy, by every human being. If they are impossible according to the doctrines of phrenology, let phrenology look to this, and rectify her blunder in the best way, as speedily as she can. M. Comte may think fit to depreciate the labours of the metaphysician; but it is not to the experimental philosopher alone that he is indebted for that positive method which he expounds with so exclusive an enthusiasm. M. Comte is a phrenologist; he adopts the fundamental principles of Gall's system, but repudiates, as consummately absurd, the list of organs, and the minute divisions of the skull, which at present obtain amongst phrenologists. How came he, a phrenologist, so far and no further, but from certain information gathered from his consciousness, or his memory, which convicted phrenology of error? And how can he, or any other, rectify this erroneous division of the cranium, and establish a more reasonable one, unless by a course of craniological observations directed and confirmed by those internal observations which he is pleased here to deride?

His hierarchy being erected, he next enters on a review of the several received sciences, marking throughout the successful, or erroneous, application of the positive method. This occupies three volumes. It is a portion of the work which we are restricted from entering on; nor shall we deviate from the line we have prescribed to ourselves. But before opening the fourth volume, in which he treats of social physics, it will not be beside our object to take a glance at the method itself, as applied in the usual field of scientific investigation, to nature, as it is called—to inorganic matter, to vegetable and animal life.

We are not here determining the merits of M. Comte in his exposition of the scientific method; we take it as we find it; and, in unsophisticated mood, we glance at the nature of this mental discipline—to make room for which, it will be remembered, so wide a territory is to be laid waste.

Facts, or phenomena, classed according to their similitude or the law of their succession—such is the material of science. All enquiry into causes, into substance, into being, pronounced impertinent and nugatory; the very language in which such enquiries are couched not allowed, perhaps, to have a meaning—such is the supreme dictate of the method, and all men yield to it at least a nominal submission. Very different is the aspect which science presents to us in these severe generalities, than when she lectures fluently before gorgeous orreries; or is heard from behind a glittering apparatus, electrical or chemical; or is seen, gay and sportive as a child, at her endless game of unwearying experiment. Here she is the harsh and strict disciplinarian. The museful, meditative spirit passes from one object of its wonder to another, and finds, at every pause it makes, that science is as strenuous in forbidding as in satisfying enquiry. The planet rolls through space—ask not how!—the mathematician will tell you at what rate it flies—let his figures suffice. A thousand subtle combinations are taking place around you, producing the most marvellous transformations—the chemist has a table of substances, and a table of proportions—names and figures both—why these transmutations take place, is a question you should be ashamed to ask. Plants spring up from the earth, and grow, and blossom at your feet, and you look on with delight, and an unsubduable wonder, and in a heedless moment you ask what is life? Science will generalize the fact to you—give you its formula for the expression of growth, decomposition, and recomposition, under circumstances not as yet very accurately collected. Still you stand gazing at the plant which a short while since stole through a crevice of the earth, and taking to itself, with such subtle power of choice, from the soil or the air, the matter that it needed, fashioned it to the green leaf and the hanging blossom. In vain! Your scientific monitor calls you from futile reveries, and repeats his formula of decomposition and recomposition. As attraction in the planet is known only as a movement admitting of a stated numerical expression, so life in the plant is to be known only as decomposition and recomposition taking place under certain circumstances. Think of it as such—no more. But, O learned philosopher! you exclaim, you shall tell me that you know not what manner of thing life is, and I will believe you; and if you add that I shall never discover it, I will believe you; but you cannot prevent me from knowing that it is something I do not know. Permit me, for I cannot help it, still to wonder what life is. Upon the dial of a watch the hands are moving, and a child asks why? Child! I respond, that the hands do move is an ultimate fact—so, represent it to yourself—and here, moreover, is the law of their movement—the longer index revolves twelve times while the shorter revolves once. This is knowledge, and will be of use to you—more you cannot understand. And the child is silent, but still it keeps its eye upon the dial, and knows there is something that it does not know.

But while you are looking, in spite of your scientific monitor, at this beautiful creature that grows fixed and rooted in the earth—what is this that glides forth from beneath its leaves, with self-determined motion, not to be expressed by a numerical law, pausing, progressing, seeking, this way and that, its pasture?—what have we here? Irritability and a tissue. Lo! it shrinks back as the heel of the philosopher has touched it, coiling and writhing itself—what is this? Sensation and a nerve. Does the nerve feel? you inconsiderately ask, or is there some sentient being, other than the nerve, in which sensation resides? A smile of derision plays on the lip of the philosopher. There is sensation—you cannot express the fact in simpler or more general terms. Turn your enquiries, or your microscope, on the organization with which it is, in order of time, connected. Ask not me, in phrases without meaning, of the unintelligible mysteries of ontology. And you, O philosopher! who think and reason thus, is not the thought within thee, in every way, a most perplexing matter? Not more perplexing, he replies, than the pain of yonder worm, which seems now to have subsided, since it glides on with apparent pleasure over the surface of the earth. Does the organization of the man, or something else within him, think?—does the organization of that worm, or something else within it, feel?—they are virtually the same questions, and equally idle. Phenomena are the sole subjects of science. Like attraction in the planet, like life in the vegetable, like sensation in the animal, so thought in man is an ultimate fact, which we can merely recognize, and place in its order in the universe. Come with me to the dissecting-room, and examine that cerebral apparatus with which it is, or was, connected.

All this "craves wary walking." It is a trying course, this method, for the uninitiated. How it strains the mind by the very limitations it imposes on its outlook! How mysterious is this very sharp, and well-defined separation from all mystery! How giddy is this path that leads always so close over the unknowable! Giddy as that bridge of steel, framed like a scimitar, and as fine, which the faithful Moslem, by the aid of his Prophet, will pass with triumph on his way to Paradise. But of our bridge, it cannot be said that it has one foot on earth and one in heaven. Apparently, it has no foundation whatever; it rises from cloud, it is lost in cloud, and it spans an inpenetrable abyss. A mist, which no wind disperses, involves both extremities of our intellectual career, and we are seen to pass like shadows across the fantastic, inexplicable interval.

We now open the fourth volume, which is emblazoned with the title of Physique Social. And here we will at once extract a passage, which, if our own remarks have been hitherto of an unattractive character, shall reward the reader for his patience. It is taken from that portion of the work—perhaps the most lucid and powerful of the whole—where, in order to demonstrate the necessity of his new science of Sociology, M. Comte enters into a review of the two great political parties which, with more or less distinctness, divide every nation of Europe; his intention being to show that both of them are equally incompetent to the task of organizing society. We shall render our quotation as brief as the purpose of exposition will allow:—

After some further observations on the theologic or retrograde school, he turns to the metaphysic, sometimes called the anarchical, sometimes doctrine critique, for M. Comte is rich in names.

As our author had shown how the theologic philosophy was inconsistent often with itself, so, in criticising the metaphysics, he exposes here also certain self-contradictions. He reproaches it with having, in its contests with the old system, endeavoured, at each stage, to uphold and adopt some of the elementary principles of that very system it was engaged in destroying.

Our readers will doubtless agree with us, that this review of political parties (though seen through an extract which we have been compelled to abbreviate in a manner hardly permissible in quoting from an author) displays a singular originality and power of thought; although each one of them will certainly have his own class of objections and exceptions to make. We said that the impression created by the work was decidedly conservative, and this quotation has already borne us out. For without implying that we could conscientiously make use of every argument here put into our hands, we may be allowed to say, as the lawyers do in Westminster Hail, if this be so, then it follows that we of the retrograde, or as we may fairly style ourselves in England—seeing this country has not progressed so rapidly as France—we of the stationary party are fully justified in maintaining our position, unsatisfactory though it may be, till some better and more definite system has been revealed to us, than any which has yet made its advent in the political world. If the revolutionary, metaphysic, or liberal school have no proper office but that of destruction—if its nature be essentially transitional—can we be called upon to forego this position, to quit our present anchorage, until we know whereto we are to be transferred? Shall we relinquish the traditions of our monarchy, and the discipline of our church, before we hear what we are to receive in exchange? M. Comte would not advise so irrational a proceeding.

But M. Comte has himself a constructive doctrine; M. Comte will give us in exchange—what? The Scientific Method!

We have just seen something of this scientific method. M. Comte himself is well aware that it is a style of thought by no means adapted to the multitude. Therefore there will arise with the scientific method an altogether new class, an intellectual aristocracy, (not the present race of savans or their successors, whom he is particularly anxious to exclude from all such advancement,) who will expound to the people the truths to which that method shall give birth. This class will take under its control all that relates to education. It will be the seat of the moral power, not of the administrative. This, together with some arguments to establish what few are disposed to question, the fundamental character of the laws of property and of marriage, is all that we are here presented with towards the definite re-organization of society.

We shall not go back to the question, already touched upon, and which lies at the basis of all this—how far it is possible to construct a science of Sociology. There is only one way in which the question can be resolved in the affirmative—namely, by constructing the science.

Meanwhile we may observe, that the general consent of a cultivated order of minds to a certain class of truths, is not sufficient for the purposes of government. We take, says M. Comte, our chemistry from the chemist, our astronomy from the astronomer; if these were fixed principles, we should take our politics with the same ease from the graduated politician. But it is worth while to consider what it is we do when we take our chemistry from the chemist, and our astronomy from the astronomer. We assume, on the authority of our teacher, certain facts which it is not in our power to verify; but his reasonings upon these facts we must be able to comprehend. We follow him as he explains the facts by which knowledge has been obtained, and yield to his statement a rational conviction. Unless we do this, we cannot be said to have any knowledge whatever of the subject—any chemistry or astronomy at all. Now, presuming there were a science of politics, as fixed and perfect as that of astronomy, the people must, at all events, be capable of understanding its exposition, or they could not possibly be governed by it. We need hardly say that those ideas, feelings, and sentiments, which can be made general, are those only on which government can rest.

In the course of the preceding extract, our author exposes the futility of that attempt which certain churchmen are making, as well on this side of the Channel as the other, to reason men back into a submission of their reason. Yet, if the science of Sociology should be above the apprehension of the vulgar, (as M. Comte seems occasionally to presume it would be,) he would impose on his intellectual priesthood a task of the very same kind, and even still more hopeless. A multitude once taught to argue and decide on politics, must be reasoned back into a submission of their reason to political teachers—teachers who have no sacred writings, and no traditions from which to argue a delegated authority, but whose authority must be founded on the very reasonableness of the entire system of their doctrine. But this is a difficulty we are certainly premature in discussing, as the true Catholic church in politics has still itself to be formed.

We are afraid, notwithstanding all his protestations, M. Comte will be simply classed amongst the Destructives, so little applicable to the generality of minds is that mode of thought, to establish which (and it is for this we blame him) he calls, and so prematurely, for so great sacrifices.

The fifth volume—the most remarkable, we think, of the whole—contains that historical survey which has been more than once alluded to in the foregoing extracts. This volume alone would make the fortune of any expert Parisian scribe who knew how to select from its rich store of original materials, who had skill to arrange and expound, and, above all, had the dexterity to adopt somewhat more ingeniously than M. Comte has done, his abstract statements to our reminiscences of historical facts. Full of his own generalities, he is apt to forget the concrete matter of the annalist. Indeed, it is a peculiarity running through the volume, that generalizations, in themselves of a valuable character, are shown to disadvantage by an unskilful alliance with history.

We will make one quotation from this portion of the work, and then we must leave M. Comte. In reviewing the theological progress of mankind, he signalizes three epochs, that of Fetishism, of Polytheism, and of Monotheism. Our extract shall relate to the first of these, to that primitive state of religion, or idolatry, in which things themselves were worshipped; the human being transferring to them immediately a life, or power, somewhat analogous to its own.

He then remarks on the perfect adaptation of this primitive theology to the initial torpor of the human understanding, which it spares even the labour of creating and sustaining the facile fictions of polytheism. The mind yields passively to that natural tendency which leads us to transfer to objects without us, that sentiment of existence which we feel within, and which, appearing at first sufficiently to explain our own personal phenomena, serves directly as an uniform base, an absolute unquestioned interpretation, of all external phenomena. He dwells with quite a touching satisfaction on this child-like and contented condition of the rude intellect.

Do not even these few fragments bear out our remarks, both of praise and censure? We see here traces of a deep penetration into the nature of man, coupled with a singular negligence of the historical picture. The principle here laid down as that of fetishism, is important in many respects; it is strikingly developed, and admits of wide application; but (presuming we are at liberty to seek in the rudest periods for the origin of religion) we do not find any such systematic procedure amongst rude thinkers—we do not find any condition of mankind which displays that complete ascendancy of the principle here described. Our author would lead us to suppose, that the deification of objects was uniformly a species of explanation of natural phenomena. The accounts we have of fetishism, as observed in barbarous countries, prove to us that this animation of stocks and stones has frequently no connexion whatever with a desire to explain their phenomena, but has resulted from a fancied relation between those objects and the human being. The charm or the amulet—some object whose presence has been observed to cure diseases, or bring good-luck—grows up into a god; a strong desire at once leading the man to pray to his amulet, and also to attribute to it the power of granting his prayer.⁵⁰

We carry on our quotation one step further, for the sake of illustrating the impracticable unmanageable nature of our author's generalizations when historically applied. Having advanced to this stage in the development of theologic thought, he finds it extremely difficult to extricate the human mind from that state in which he has, with such scientific precision, fixed it.

The transition, it seems, was effected by an early effort of generalization; for as men recognized the similitude of certain objects, and classified them into one species, so they approximated the corresponding Fetishes, and reduced them at length to a principal Fetish, presiding over this class of phenomena, who thus, liberated from matter, and having of necessity an independent being of its own, became a god.

This apparatus of transition is ingenious enough, but surely it is utterly uncalled for. The same uncultured imagination that could animate a tree, could people the air with gods. Whenever the cause of any natural event is invisible, the imagination cannot rest in Fetishism; it must create some being to produce it. If thunder is to be theologically explained—and there is no event in nature more likely to suggest such explanation—the imagination cannot animate the thunder; it must create some being that thunders. No one, the discipline of whose mind had not been solely and purely scientific, would have created for itself this difficulty, or solved it in such a manner.⁵¹

BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE

NO. CCCXXIX. MARCH, 1843. VOL. LIII.

CONTENTS.

AMMALÁT BEK.

A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS.